Updates from the team behind 'Mental Health and Wellbeing'
Read what the team behind the mission on 'Mental Health and Wellbeing' have been up to. They'll regularly update this blog post with the latest news and developments.
May 2023: Register to become a wellbeing champion
To learn more about how you can support the mental health and wellbeing of others, sign-up to become a champion for wellbeing in London.
When you sign up, you’ll get free training and resources from City Hall to help you support the wellbeing of your community. Every month in your inbox you’ll receive:
- Training to boost your skills and confidence with difficult conversations
- Support to get you through challenging times
- Opportunity to connect with others championing mental health
In the meantime, you can share how you improve the mental health of yourself and others by taking part in our discussion here on Talk London.
If you’d like to find out more about what City Hall is doing to support mental health, then please read the Mayor’s update.
January 2022: How can we support ourselves through difficult times?
London’s first Great Mental Health Day aims to get us talking about mental health and how we can improve our wellbeing.
On Friday, 28 January 2022, London is celebrating its first Great Mental Health Day.
The day aims to get us talking about mental health, highlight the great support available, and most of all, take the stigma out of asking for help when we need it.
How we can boost our mental wellbeing
Great Mental Health Day is a chance to share ideas on the small things we can do to:
- boost our own wellbeing
- support each other through difficult times
- celebrate the many, many examples of people helping their communities during the pandemic.
Research suggests that:
- having a strong social network improves wellbeing and can make you live longer
- people who exercise regularly tend to be happier
- learning new things can make you feel more confident and less likely to be anxious or depressed
- having a hobby reduces stress, anxiety and depression.
You can get more simple tools, ideas and inspiration to help improve wellbeing from Thrive LDN.
Londoners share their ideas
Watch as Londoners launch Great Mental Health Day and share their ways of supporting their mental health:
Join the conversation
To mark Great Mental Health Day, you can share how you improve the mental health and wellbeing of yourself and others.
You can also:
- use the hashtag #GreatMentalHealth on social media to share your own tips, advice and experience
- see what else is going on for Great Mental Health Day in your area
- access free resources and online tools available to promote good wellbeing.
Great Mental Health Day is supported by the Mayor of London, London’s councils and the NHS in London. It’s being facilitated by Thrive LDN, a citywide movement to ensure all Londoners have an equal opportunity for good mental health and wellbeing.
October to November 2021: a message of hope
This year’s World Mental Health Day offered an important reminder of the need to reflect, to talk, to reach out.
World Mental Health Day: 10 October 2021
This annual awareness day helps us all:
- seek and share inspiration
- take collective action to tackle mental health stigmas
- celebrate the challenges we’ve overcome.
Reflecting on the pandemic
As we enter the second winter of the pandemic, this October’s World Mental Health Day felt particularly well timed.
It offered a chance to look back over the last 18 months.
We have seen lost opportunities, structural inequalities, social isolation, disruption to work and education, and grief on a huge scale.
But there’s also a sense of hope. The vaccine programme is in full swing and life is returning to something like normality.
Impact on young people
Given all this, it’s reasonable that many of us are going through a mix of emotions.
And the impact has been felt harder by some groups than others.
For young Londoners, the pandemic has taken a huge toll. It’s affected learning, jobs and social lives, and amplified uncertainties about the future.
A message of hope: festival for young people
This year, young Londoners led a festival at East London’s Rich Mix. It was a chance to come together and highlight their positive individual and collective stories.
The Never Alone LDN festival saw four events held across three days, finishing with a film screening on World Mental Health Day itself.
The festival provided several opportunities to share messages of hope.
It included live music performances, creative workshops, panel discussions and more.
The activities explored the impact the last year has had on our wellbeing. Broader issues such as loss of opportunities, discrimination and climate change were covered too.
The festival was co-designed by young Londoners in partnership with the Mayor’s Peer Outreach Team, Thrive LDN, Rich Mix and the Baring Foundation.
Watch the festival highlights:
You can also:
- catch up on the festival highlights on Thrive LDN’s website
- join the conversation on Twitter with #NeverAloneLDN.
What’s next?
Never Alone LDN was just the tip of the iceberg.
We heard a handful of personal experiences at the festival. But we know there are thousands of inspiring tales of Londoners taking action to support their own or their community’s wellbeing.
When it comes to talking about our mental health, there’s so much to learn, build upon and celebrate.
As we recover from the pandemic, we aim to carry on enabling and empowering Londoners of all ages to:
- continue these important conversations
- access support
- build a healthier, happier city.
Keep an eye out for our next emails to have your say.
Not yet signed up for Talk London? Please register below – it only takes a few minutes.
August – September 2021, Tools, ideas & inspiration for better wellbeing
Anxious about getting back out there? Feeling uncertain about the future? Excited about seeing friends and family again? Overwhelmed by new freedoms?
Many of us are facing a return to the workplace, increased social contact, new financial circumstances, and altered routines as COVID restrictions come and go. It is important to recognise that we are all going through a period of huge change.
As we begin to recover from the pandemic, remember however you are feeling right now is valid.
We want to provide Londoners with simple, easy to access tools, ideas and inspiration to boost wellbeing during these challenging times.
Thrive LDN has launched a space to help promote individual mental wellbeing and to help Londoners support each other. This was first shared with Londoners on 1 September, and will continue to grow and reflect what is needed most.
The webpages are packed with resources and tools for Londoners, designed around those factors we know protect mental health, from taking care of yourself, and maintaining social contacts, to being creative and connecting with nature. It includes first-hand experiences from people sharing how they have overcome the challenges they have faced.
The resources are designed to help you help yourself, as well as your friends, family or others in your community or workplace. They are tried and tested to help improve wellbeing.
Take a look at what’s on offer: https://thriveldn.co.uk/help-yourself-and-others
The launch of the new resource pages marks the start of the mission’s Wellbeing Campaign, which aims to support Londoners throughout recovery from the pandemic with the latest wellbeing resources.
May - August 2021, Supporting Londoners through grief
As we begin to recover from the pandemic and return to a ‘new normal’, we cannot ignore the huge scale of loss London has faced. It is estimated that over a hundred thousand Londoners are grieving someone close to them lost to the virus, and many more have had the normal sources of support and comfort disrupted by restrictions.
Nothing will make losing someone any easier, but together we can do more to support Londoners to talk about grief and bereavement, remember those we have lost, and support loved ones left behind.
In response to the scale of loss, London’s Bereavement Support Programme has been firmly embedded into the Mental Health and Wellbeing Recovery mission work. Phase one is well underway, in the form of a citywide bereavement campaign led by Thrive LDN: In loving memory of Londoners lost. The campaign launched as the Mayor opened the London Blossom Garden, and aims to provide an opportunity for reflection and awareness raising of the scale of grief and loss in our city.
During June and July, Thrive LDN are working in partnership with Cruse Bereavement Care UK to deliver free, one-hour webinars on Bereavement and Loss Awareness. This marks phase two of the bereavement programme, which aims to build understanding around the impacts of grief and of the support available. The webinars have been targeted at those who, through work or in a voluntary capacity, may come into contact with bereaved Londoners.
As we all know, an improved bereavement offer for all Londoners is essential for London’s recovery. To begin to address the gaps, we are pleased to let you know that Thrive LDN have commissioned Good Thinking to develop culturally competent bereavement workbooks and webinars to be delivered this autumn.
August 2020 - March 2021
We know that the impacts of the pandemic on Londoners’ mental wellbeing are huge, and will continue to be. We also know that the impacts have been felt most by those Londoners and communities who entered the pandemic already in a position of disadvantage. For some people, the pandemic has been one of many challenges, only adding to people’s negative feelings.
When speaking to Londoners through Talk London last summer - mental health and wellbeing was the single most talked about health issue. It will be vital to London’s recovery, as the anxieties and uncertainties around the virus, lockdown restrictions and social isolation have affected our natural or usual coping mechanisms.
As the pandemic continues, we are seeing the challenges Londoners are facing, with reduced life satisfaction, increases in depression and anxiety, and higher levels of loneliness.
When thinking about London’s recovery from the pandemic, we will build on activities to support mental wellbeing that are already happening around us. We know there is no easy fix, and no one size fits all. This is a chance to learn from, build up and grow initiatives in our communities, high streets, workplaces, schools and more. By 2025 we want Londoners all across the city to feel empowered and able to support their own and their communities’ mental wellbeing in a way that best suits them. To do this they will have better access to support, resources and ideas to take forward the activities that really work.
This is a rare opportunity to build a better London, one that is fairer and more equal than before. We will continue to work with Londoners, communities and organisations to develop the scope of this mission.