This week is Mental Health Awareness week, a campaign week that is important to us as we support many people through mental health recovery.
The theme for this year is body image – how you think and feel about your body. A topic that is becoming increasingly popular in our society with the increase in social media putting unrealistic pressures on people to look a certain way. The development in technology, photo editing apps and filters make it too easy for us to change our appearance online. Apps can now be used for manipulating our waists, adding height, shrinking legs and enlarging breasts – all these things should not be important to the world but seemingly are and people are becoming unhappy with the ‘before’ images of themselves, which then chips away at self esteem, confidence and mental health.
#LOVEYOURSELF – loving yourself and appreciating who you are is key at being able to improve your mental health – throughout this week we will be on social media, providing tips and advice on how to learn to love yourself for the person you are. Follow us on social @CATALYSTethos – if you like our tweets, feel free to share, retweet and comment. The hashtags that we will be using: #MHAW18 #BodyImage #LoveYourself #YouMatter
We will continue to work with our clients this week but are also focusing on our staff – it’s important that they are happy and well to be able to help others. On Tuesday we have organised a ‘Tea for the Soul’ coffee morning, encouraging staff to come and chat to colleagues over a nice cuppa. On Wednesday we have arranged a ‘Wellbeing Walk’ over lunchtime, helping to promote the benefits of physical activity on mental health.
If you would like to find out more about specific topics relating to body image, please see the useful links of websites we have put together:
https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk
https://www.healthysurrey.org.uk/
https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/body-image.html
https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/learn/general-information/ten-steps