Mental health awareness week
Find out how our national publishers have been reporting on mental health.
The coronavirus pandemic is having an enormous impact on people’s wellbeing, as nearly every aspect of our everyday lives have changed. The 2020 theme for mental health awareness week is kindness, something that has been witnessed up and down the nation over the past weeks.
Ever since the lockdown started and especially this week, our national titles have provided readers with informative resources in all formats, on where to look for help, insights into how people have dealt with mental health issues and much more.
Here are a few of the many examples from our publishers across print, online and audio:
In a lovely tribute to community heroes, the Metro has a column inviting readers to nominate a favourite key worker, neighbour, friend or relative who has shown kindness and celebrate them, with short messages of thanks.
The papers this week have written about the many initiatives and resources available to people who feel they are struggling. The Daily Mirror had an exclusive about mental health for frontline workers, the Daily Mail wrote about the royals’ ‘Heads Together’ Instagram guides giving tips on kindness and self-care during the pandemic and in the i newspaper, Jo Brand invited people to join a virtual ‘Big Lunch’.
Across the sports section of the Daily Mirror and Daily Express yesterday, there was a mental health special featuring rugby legend Jason Robinson and Dame Katherine Grainger, Britain’s five-time rowing Olympic medallist speaking to double Olympic skeleton gold medallist Lizzy Arnold and race walking world record holder Tom Bosworth all talking about the pressures of aiming to be the best.
Online
Many news brands have created dedicated mental health sections of their websites, such as the Daily Mirror, The Guardian, Evening Standard, The Sun, i and The Daily Telegraph, which also has a section called ‘You Are Not Alone’ where it shares “stories of support, community spirit, optimism and social connectivity”.
These online hubs house some incredible resources and explainers including everything you need to know about looking after your mental health, a video on how online therapy works, “how to survive a mental battle” from a professional adventurer and a great article featuring ex-cricketer Marcus Trescothick on a new book being published urging men to speak up via The Sun.
There is also a lot of coronavirus specific content including how the coronavirus is impacting mental health, corona angst, how to access free and private therapy during lockdown, how to deal with re-entry anxiety post-coronavirus and the impact of the revised lockdown rules on mental health.
For something different, The Guardian’s website features an impressive graphic short story for the coronavirus age by Mark Haddon, in which a man finds isolation no different from normal life. You can read this here.
Audio
Podcasts have become a popular channel for news brands to communicate with their readers, so it comes as no surprise that there are some great mental health audio resources.
Reach’s ‘No really, I’m fine’ podcast has returned to help and support people during the coronavirus crisis to get people talking and sharing their experiences. Also this week the publisher’s royal podcast Pod Save the Queen will discuss why it matters that royals lend talk about mental health.
The Guardian has an audio long read on therapy under lockdown and The Times’ ‘Stories of our time’ has done a podcast on ‘Happiness’ and what we can do to bring joy into our lives during the coronavirus crisis. And finally, Metro’s podcast Mentally Yours has produced an episode on mental health awareness week.
To finish Metro put together a lovely collection of mental health quotes and sayings to mark the week. If you like to learn more about mental health awareness you can click here.
