World Mental Health Day
It’s World Mental Health Day today.
This year’s theme is 'Mental Health in an Unequal World’.
Today we share some of our favourite self-care resources, and invite you to take part in reflecting on how we can all support people in improving their mental health, while living in an unequal world.
Resource recommendations (all are free, instantly accessible, and evidence-based):
Fantastic, 40-minute cinematic lecture on how emotions are made, with neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett. So many interesting insights.
A long list of lovely self-compassion exercises and practices from Dr. Kristen Neff. You can also take a quiz to measure your self-compassion.
A very useful 10-part self-help for social anxiety video series by Norwegian clinical psychologist Dr Magnus Nordmo. Wonderfully illustrated CBT.
A wonderful podcast by Dr Tara Brach, meditation teacher, psychologist and author. Wise, funny, gentle and soothing.
Another lovely podcast called Sunday Soother, about how to live authentically and compassionately as a sensitive person.
Did you know:
Children from the poorest 20% of households are 4 times more likely to have serious mental health difficulties by the age of 11 as those from the wealthiest 20% (Morrison Gutman et al., 2015)
Children and young people with a learning disability are 3 times more likely than average to have a mental health problem (Lavis et al., 2019)
Men and women from African-Caribbean communities in the UK have higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, higher risk of suicide, and higher likelihood of being diagnosed with schizophrenia (Khan et al., 2017)
People who identify as LGBTQ+ have higher rates of common mental health problems and lower wellbeing than heterosexual people, and the gap is greater for people over 55 and under 35 (Semlyen et al., 2016)
Up to 50% of cancer patients suffer from a mental illness, especially depression and anxiety (Massie, 2004) (And treating these symptoms can improve survival times; Giese-Davis et al., 2011)
Women are ten times as likely as men to have experiences extensive physical and sexual abuse during their lives. Of those who have, 36% have attempted suicide (Scott and McManus, 2016)
During pregnancy and the year following, 10-15% of women experience depression (Wisner et al., 2013), and 20% experience anxiety (Dennis et al., 2015)
These statistics reflect the pain, the brokenness, and the inequality of the world we currently live in.
We insist that talking about these problems, thinking about them, planning, and carrying out actions to address them is an important responsibility of any company in this space, and not just an exercise in niceness.
We invite you to read below what we are doing to help, and we would love to hear your ideas too. Or, even better, hear what things you are doing, so we can learn and share.
Our starting points for this work are:
We are currently offering Alena for free as a part of our closed beta and plan to create a future business model within which we will be able to continue to provide affordable help
Alena is designed to be accessible and useful to all people across income, employment, residential location, housing and education inequality gaps. We design with accessibility and compassion in mind, for a wide range of phones, browsers, reading levels, and everyday life schedules in mind
We conduct user research in a way that is inclusive, respectful, and makes minimal assumptions, which allows us to reach a more diverse and representative group of users (If you would like to join our supportive WhatsApp community, please click here)
We foster an inclusive and diverse workplace (see our team here)
We are working towards getting medical device approval, meaning that the safety and efficacy of Alena will be officially validated as adhering to the latest regulatory requirements. This can also enable institutions to provide Alena to people who may not otherwise seek support
We have a comprehensive policy on suicidal intent, following the standard of care that licensed therapists adhere to, to ensure that these thoughts are assessed, and people are supported and signposted as well as possible
We have a feature designed to support people when they are struggling or nearing crisis, designed in collaboration with our clinical psychologist advisor to support the wellbeing of the person in the moment, and ease distress - irrespective of the cause
We have dedicated our professional lives to improving mental health
We believe in improving wellbeing by empowering minds, and in using universally adopted technology to do so
We would like to honour this year’s World Mental Health Day theme by encouraging you to take good care of your mental health today.
“At the core of recovery is self-awareness”
“Our calmness is contagious”
Putting these together, we suggest that to address the inequalities in the world, we have to start with ourselves, with sustainable and helpful self-care practices, looking at ourselves with kindness, honesty, and compassion. This is how we grow, and it is how we make change.
To read more about World Mental Health Day, we recommend starting with the World Health Organisation’s Key Messages.