Are you surviving or thriving? That’s the question being posed during this year’s Mental Health Awareness week, which runs from 8th to 14th May.
Here at Kemble at Home we think it’s a very good question and we applaud the Mental Health Foundation’s decision to look at mental health from a different angle.
They argue that good mental health is more than simply the absence of a mental health problem, saying: “Rather than ask why so many people are living with mental health problems, we will seek to uncover why too few of us are thriving with good mental health.”
We couldn’t agree more.
The Mental Health Foundation has launched Mental Health Awareness Week by publishing a report into the state of the nation’s mental health, with some interesting findings.
According to the report, people aged 55 and over experience better mental health than average, although only 13% of respondents said they were living with high levels of good mental health.
People aged over 55 tend to have better mental health than average because they are more likely to engage in the following activities:
One of our key aims here at Kemble at Home is to help improve the wellbeing of our clients, and a big part of that is trying to give people the opportunity to take part in these kinds of activities. One of the main reasons (but certainly not the only reason) for not doing so, and therefore leading to poor mental health, is loneliness and isolation.
We are working really hard to tackle these issues, which is why we are arranging events like the Autism Information Workshop on June 2 (https://www.facebook.com/events/1743562812601875) and undertaking a 24-hour walk to raise funds for the dementia services provided at Leominster Meeting Centre.
So we welcome the Mental Health Foundation’s report and would encourage you to have a read on their website - https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/surviving-or-thriving-state-uks-mental-health
Let’s keep working together to help more people thrive rather than just survive.
