Mind

We’re proud to support Celebration Day - a day to take a moment to celebrate the lives of those who shaped us.

Share your fond memories of those you want to remember today below 🩵

If you’re struggling with grief, you deserve support. Our bereavement information has suggestions for coping and getting help.

The Government is trialling some changes to the ‘Fit Note’ system.

In four local pilots, people will be offered more targeted support if they are unwell and struggling to work, rather than just being signed off work by a GP.

When people seek a Fit Note because of poor mental health, it rarely leads to them being offered the wider support they need. Giving people the chance to have detailed conversations about the challenges they face and the support they need is a positive step.

These pilots could mark the start of real improvements to the Fit Note system. But it’s vitally important that this is a supportive and collaborative process.

People with mental health problems must not feel pressured to work when they don’t feel able, or to return to workplaces that are not supporting their mental health.

For too long, people with mental health problems have been forced to engage with a benefits system that can make them feel as though they have to ‘prove’ they need support.

Trust will need to be rebuilt if these reforms are going to work.

Great mental health care is when you get treated as a person, not just a patient. In Mental Health Awareness Week Grace explains why.

I’d just finished university and life felt uncertain. I knew I needed to speak to someone about my low mood, yet didn’t know what to do.

I felt like I needed advice from my doctor because I was really struggling, but I was worried about calling because of my previous experience with doctors.

I was so apprehensive about who I’d face on the other end of the phone and how they would treat me.

I’d recently read a BBC article that week headlined, ‘Life being stressful is not an illness' - GPs on mental health over-diagnosis’.

Of the 752 GPs who took part in the BBC’s research, 442 (or 59%) said they believed that mental health over-diagnosis is a concern.

Would the GP I’d speak to on the phone think the same?

I called.

His response was so unexpected, as I have faced a decade of pushback and dismissiveness from GPs when it comes to appointments about my mental health.

The GP was so empathetic; not just about my low mood but also about the uncertainty I felt over graduating and being between different things.

He told me that he also found it difficult when he finished university, understood why I needed more support, and reassured me that I’d done the right thing in reaching out to him.

I'd been so nervous to call the GP, but this time it felt like I was talking to a human over a professional. I felt supported rather than challenged.

I can’t tell you how much of a relief this was.

I understand GP practices are under resourced.

I understand it might not always be possible to give people the support they need.

But seeing people as a person, not a patient, and showing kindness, compassion and understanding, can have a huge impact on someone’s experience of reaching out for mental health support.

Like it did on mine

So, when I thanked my GP for his kindness,
I had in mind my 12-year-old self.

I hope that if another young person were to call him about their mental health for the first time, he would approach them with the same understanding he offered me.

Maybe then that young person would expect the best treatment, rather than the worst.