During mental health awareness week at St Anne’s Alcohol Service’s we have been doing numerous exciting and informative tasks to promote the importance of mental health and good well-being to our residents.
In our client morning meetings, we have started the day off positively by discussing the importance of mental health and the different ways to achieve good mental health.
Throughout the week, staff have gone above and beyond to create a happy atmosphere, raising awareness of different mental health issues and the stigma surrounding them. We feel this is a good way to educate and bring further awareness to different people’s experiences. We hope that by doing this is makes people a little kinder and more understanding!
We have spoken about mindfulness, how to be mindful and the ways in which we can relax. Our staff have brought to life many different techniques and started each morning with a positive spin.
At St Anne’s Alcohol Service’s, we recognise the importance and the effect that compliments have on us, so we asked our residents to write down and give each other a compliment and share it with the group. We felt that by writing it down the residents can look back at it when they need a boost and remind themselves of how wonderful they are and how far they have come!
Perhaps our most exciting task of the week was allocating residents in pairs and giving them the opportunity to research different ways of improving their mental health. The residents researched and prepared their individual topics and presented them to each other and the staff team. The residents added their own adaptions to topics such as Healing Crystals, Aromatherapy, Modern apps, Chinese herbal medicines, Bach’s flower remedies and many more! One of our newer residents shared her passion and knowledge for healing crystals and shared her own crystals with the group and advised her peers on what crystals may help them.
Our residents also generated discussions and performed role plays to demonstrate the methods and their effects. They each shared their own views on the different methods of improving mental health. Amongst the methods, aromatherapy, relaxation and meditation were popular within the group.
Doing this not only helps to educate, but also pushes the residents out of their comfort zones and gives them an opportunity do something they might not have done before. Our residents felt that after they had presented, they felt proud and gave them a sense of achievement, which was amazing!
Letitia Poole and Olivia Bragg – Student Social Worker