Category: Wellbeing and self-care

In 2018, Ollie experienced a relapse of depression and OCD. This year, he entered fatherhood during the height of the lockdown. Ollie tells us how he’s found it adjusting to this big lifestyle transition, and how he’s tried to look after his mental health throughout it.

Mark Williams is a keynote speaker, author and international campaigner, as well as a good friend of our founding charity, Adferiad Recovery. He provides perinatal mental health training to new parents and parent-to-be, to help ensure that all families are supported during the perinatal period, which is often a challenging time. Below Mark shares his personal story about his own mental health battle, the stigma he faced as a man, and how he ended up campaigning for change for other men and dads.

One of our founding partners, Rethink Mental Illness, provides the Advice and Information Service (RAIS) – a helpline that offers practical help with a range of topics, as well as advising people affected by mental illness of their rights, helping them identify their options and empowering them to take action. Supporting the small team of staff (Advice and Information Officers) who run the service, is a large team of volunteers who equip people with the information they need to get the right help. Together, the RAIS volunteers and staff make an invaluable contribution to the service.

This Volunteers’ Week (1-7 June 2021), we’re exploring the mutually beneficial experience of giving your time to volunteering. Sarah, our fantastic colleague and Partnerships Manager, shares her story of how her endeavours helping others ultimately helped her.

Johnston is our Events Fundraising and Engagement Officer and a valued colleague. While on furlough in 2020, he decided to learn something new and teach himself to sew. Noticing his newfound sense of purpose, Johnston had an appetite to take his sewing to the next level and started to immerse himself in YouTube videos and sewing books. His new project had a profound impact on his wellbeing – he told us that he finds sewing relaxing and rewarding, and that he’d love to have his own fashion design business one day. He’s already started making his own clothes… Sew far sew good!

Rosie Robson is an Account Executive and one of the UK hub leads for the ‘Be Wellness’ team at Salesforce, our valued corporate partners. We recently teamed up with Salesforce, supporting them as they launched a global wellness initiative. They managed to encourage 350 people to exercise over 21 days in an effort to keep fit, socialise and raise vital funds for the people we support. We were so impressed that they raised an incredible £2,500 and even managed to build a running community at work, maintaining their fitness levels beyond the event. Hear from Rosie below on how important being active is for everyone at Salesforce.

Kathy O’Callaghan was a loving aunt and a wonderful friend to Laura. After she took her own life in October 2020, Laura and her good friend Jane decided to take action and raise awareness around mental health, in her memory. They took on a 27km walking challenge on the beautiful island of Lanzarote, wanting to do something that enhanced their fitness and made them feel both physically and mentally good. And they managed to raise an astonishing €2,773! Jane tells us their story and explains why this walk was so important to her and Laura.

We’re teaming up with award-winning artist Paul Cummins MBE on a campaign to help the public to spring into action this Mental Health Awareness Week and create healthy dialogues around mental health in society.