I have facilitated many workshops, given lectures and had
any number of public speaking engagements. I’ve always delivered these on my own - Up
until this week. On Thursday
I co-delivered a workshop for the first time. It was the first of my “Let’s Talk About Mental Health” workshops and my co presenter was an amazing young woman by the name of Ruth Fox.
I co-delivered a workshop for the first time. It was the first of my “Let’s Talk About Mental Health” workshops and my co presenter was an amazing young woman by the name of Ruth Fox.
Ruth is a 19-year-old mental health advocate, footballer,
author and public speaker. She is a rising star on Social Media (over 6,000
Twitter followers already) as well as appearing on traditional media including, Sky Sports, ITV, BBC
and local radio.
As those of you who follow my blog know, I am an inclusion
coach with over twenty-five years’ experience working with hard to reach groups,
including people experiencing mental health challenges. I ran a local authority
program called “Invigorate” for nine years. This program utilised sports and
physical activity to support mental health service users. So, I like to think
that my experience in this field gives value to all my workshops. However, to
have the inspiring story and life experience that Ruth brought added powerful
context to the narrative and made for a wonderful first joint workshop. Having
come through her own difficult experiences with depression, Ruth aspires to
raise awareness of mental health across all sectors and particularly wants to
focus on the Education system, the Mental Health system and raising awareness
of mental health in sports coaches.
So, she is an ideal partner to work with.
The combination of my experience
“working”
with the challenges and Ruth’s experience “living” with
the challenges made for, I believe, a powerful workshop.
The combination of my experience
“working”
with the challenges and Ruth’s experience “living” with
the challenges made for, I believe, a powerful workshop.
We began the workshop by looking at how people view physical
health compared to their attitudes towards mental health. Why do we take a
person’s physical health for granted, yet talking about their mental health is
a big taboo?
We covered many of the common and well-known mental health
conditions and discussed the shocking statistics around the subject of mental
health.
I person every 40 seconds in the world takes their own life.
800 million people face the challenges of depression worldwide.
84 men in the UK take their own life a week, that's 12 every
day, 1 every 2 hours
Suicide is the biggest killer of men U50
1 person takes their own life every 90 mins in the UK.
We also spent a lot of the workshop discussing attitudes to
mental health, particularly in the mainstream media. It’s frightening that over a third of the
public think people with a mental health problem are likely to be violent and
headlines like these don’t help. In fact, people with severe mental illnesses
are more likely to be victims, rather than perpetrators, of violent crime.
An interesting part of the workshop was where we explored
the use of language. We asked the question, Does the language we use influence
our attitude towards people with mental health conditions? Can it lead to
Stigma?
It’s so, so important to be having these discussions. Only
by talking about mental health openly can we ever hope to end the Stigma.
Ruth and I plan to deliver more of these workshops and
dates, times and venues will be announced soon.
In the meantime, feel free to contact me for information on the workshops and thank you for checking out this week’s blog post.
See you all again next week.
Stay safe.
Steve Morley
Inclusion Coach
Inclusion Coach
