Mental Health & Wellbeing

A wellbeing toolkit can help you look after your mental health on a daily basis. Some of the things that you should include in your wellbeing toolkit are:

• Remember you are only human and sometimes bad things happen
• Sometimes our brain doesn’t know what is real and what isn’t so when we are getting stressed about thoughts, our brain can think that is what is actually happening. So try to remind yourself it isn’t happening.
• Try to swap negative thoughts for positive – make it into a new habit
• Eat well, exercise well and sleep well
• Set goals for yourself, some outside of your comfort zone to try and push yourself that little bit further
• Remember to take a minute to breathe
• If you are an employer, put in a wellness Action Plan at work. To see how your staff feel about their mental health and what can be done to improve it.

You could talk to your GP, the Samaritans, online chat services, a friend/family member that you can trust or a Mental Health First Aider at work.

There is a vast multitude of things that could cause ill-mental health. Sometimes it will be more than just one cause. And different people will be affected differently by the same cause. Some of the factors listed below could result in poor mental health but this list is not exhaustive:

• Childhood or adulthood abuse, trauma or neglec
• Social loneliness, disadvantage or poverty
• Violence, bullying or other abuse
• Trauma like military combat, or experiencing something where you feared for your life
• Homelessness
• Long-term stress
• Drug or alcohol abuse
• Bereavement
• Physical damage

The 2 most common treatments for mental health are medication or talking treatments, but there are many other options available. Talking treatments are often with a trained professional where you speak about specific problems or memories, sometimes working towards improving relationships with others. Speaking with a professional can help you to:

• Deal with a specific problem
• Cope with upsetting memories or experiences
• Improve relationships
• Develop more helpful ways of living day-to-day

The most common form of talking therapy is ‘Cognitive Behavioural Therapy’ or ‘CBT’. CBT is a relatively short-term treatment that aims to identify connections between your thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and to help you develop practical skills to manage any negative patterns that may be causing you difficulties. Medication treatments aim to treat the symptoms of the mental illness but not so much curing the source of the problem. They might include sleeping pills, antidepressants, antipsychotics or mood stabilisers.