Radio Bath News Three

Bath mental health charity highlighting connections this week

19 May 2022 by Victoria Nunes

Bath Mind are bringing attention to the importance of connections as part of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week

By Alastair Salmon

This week Mental health charity Bath Mind has participated in Mental Health Awareness Week. The group has run several community events across the local area to get people talking about their well-being.

Mental Health Awareness Week is one of the most successful national mental health campaigns, with themes set by the Mental Health Foundation. This year, the focus is on loneliness. Still, Bath Mind is flipping the script and focusing on the importance of connections after a very isolating couple of years.

Director of Business Development at Bath Mind, Hannah Roper, told us why the week matters:

“Mental Health Awareness Week is a really key driver for us because I think it’s highlighting mental health to the whole community, and having a dedicated week is great for us because we can really capitalise on that – and it’s important for people to start opening up those conversations and encouraging people to maybe seek help that they might not have done so before.”

Between May 9th to 15th, Bath Mind has been running numerous events in the local area, including tea and cake in the Alice Park Community Garden, well-being walks, and a nutrition lunch club with their ‘Food for Thought’ service. This is all to bring the community together and promote the power of connections.

Hannah explained that this year’s theme is significant to the charity’s work: “We are coming out of the pandemic, but people are still, of course, struggling with their mental health, and this is an ongoing problem we will face sadly as a society.”

While Mental Health Awareness Week has come to an end for this year, Bath Mind runs community events year-round for people to get involved.

You can keep up to date with Bath Mind’s work on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, or their website. Bath Mind relies on the community’s support and welcomes donations and volunteers.