World Mental Health Day is taking place on Sunday 10th October and is dedicated to raising awareness and challenging the stigma surrounding mental health. At Excelcare, we wanted to honour and emphasise the importance of good mental health, so we have decided to share stories and advocate for mental health awareness all week.
This year, Mind have created a #DoOneThing campaign, encouraging everyone to focus on doing one thing to make a difference to someone’s mental health, no matter how big or small. As a result, we are sharing stories all week where people in the Excelcare family have had someone do one thing that has made a difference to their own mental wellbeing.
To commence the week, Cintia, our new Head of Learning & Organisational Development, has shared her story below.
“In 2015 I was going through a very difficult divorce. My relationship had been deteriorating for many years and I believed I had plenty of reasons to feel like a victim. I didn’t realise it then, but I was living with strong levels of anxiety and a persistent depression. Realising that my friends and family weren’t always available to listen to my dramas, I decided to go and make new friends, thinking that they would be able help me and sort my life, ultimately making me happy. Then something interesting happened… A new friend quickly realised that ‘I had issues’ and told me that I needed to look into SELF HELP!
I was honestly so hurt by that suggestion, as I did not think someone would say this to a person they cared about. In my mind then, good friends and family were there to help you and back you up no matter what! Also, there was a huge stigma around mental health and self-help, and I refused to believe that I was the one who was the problem.
I was initially closed by this idea, but a few days later, the thought of self-help came back to me in the middle of the night, so I went on YouTube to learn what self-help is about. From that day, my life simply turned around! I learned that self-help is not a lonely journey; you do get loads of people coming your way to help, but this time, it works because YOU are open to helping and healing your own wounds and you know where to look for. YOU TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR HAPPINESS!
Here is a picture of my favourite books that I would highly recommend to anyone, even if you don’t think you have ‘issues’ that need to be solved. You might be surprised with the new, happier, truer version of you that emerges, full of grace and potential!”
We will be sharing the stories of people in the Excelcare family on our website and on Facebook throughout the week, in the hope that we can expand the conversations that we are having surrounding mental health.