1915 In 1915, Margaret Llewelyn Davies edited and published ‘Maternity – Letters From Working Women’. This moving collection of letters from members of the Women’s Co-operative Guild details their experiences of pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, stillbirth, infant death and parenting. At the end of every letter was listed the family salary and the number of miscarriages,…
Category: Mental health & emotional wellbeing
Workplace mental health hub highly commended at the BMA Patient Information Awards.
In 2017 I developed a content plan and wrote 26 articles for Bupa’s new workplace mental health hub. I used to be a workplace ‘health check’ consultant for Time to Change and I enjoyed using my knowledge and experience of the issues involved to create resources that would help organisations make positive change. All the…
Pregnancy loss and mental health – new resources online now
I have just finished researching and developing a series of resources around pregnancy loss and mental health for the Miscarriage Association. Research I did extensive desk research and conducted a survey of the Miscarriage Associations supporters and stakeholders. In one week we received 1716 responses from people who self-identified as having had mental health problems…
WRISK – understanding and improving communication of risk during pregnancy
The WRISK project is a collaboration between the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas) and Heather Trickey at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. They are aiming to draw on women’s experiences to understand and improve the development and communication of risk messages in pregnancy. They asked me to blog about my experience of…
Co-creating new resources with Action on Postpartum Psychosis
In 2013 I ran a training session for Action on Postpartum Psychosis on giving peer support online as part of their award-winning peer support programme. I’ve been working with them ever since. I’ve done a further five training sessions, including one when heavily pregnant and another four months after Oaklan was born. Now my maternity leave…
Understanding mental health problems – booklet launch
Last week Oaklan and I went on an adventure to London for the launch of the latest version of Mind’s flagship booklet ‘Understanding mental health problems’. I wrote this when I was pregnant and it was great to see it finally published. It’s the first title to be published in the new full colour format –…
BMA Patient Information Awards for Mind and Miscarriage Association work
I’m really chuffed to be able to share that both Mind and the Miscarriage Association received awards at the British Medical Association Patient Information Awards 2017 for information and that I researched and wrote. The awards aim to ‘encourage excellence in the production and dissemination of accessible, well-designed and clinically balanced patient information’. They look for…
Published in The Recovery Letters
Last year, James Withney of The Recovery Letters emailed to see if I would be interested in contributing a letter to the published anthology. The Recovery Letters are addressed to people experiencing depression. They share experiences and give friendship and hope for recovery. I’ve always believed in letters and writing as a way through difficult…
Understanding eating problems – updated Mind resource
I don’t usually blog about individual Mind booklets and online resources I write or update (you can see the list here). But my most recently completed product is pretty close to my heart. It’s called Understanding eating problems. Changes and updates I’ve tried to emphasise that you can find eating problems incredibly difficult to live…
Managing mental health in a relationship – one of Mind’s top 10 most read blog posts in 2016
I was chuffed to see the blog I did for Mind on managing mental health in a relationship was in Mind’s top 10 most read blogs of 2016.
Writing to the Information Standard for Mind and the British Lung Foundation
If the events of 2016 have told us anything, it’s that people can write any old rubbish and post it online as fact. And people will believe them. Especially if those people are vulnerable or anxious. And no one is more vulnerable or anxious than when it comes to researching health concerns. The internet is…
Please help me raise money for Mind
Update – I did it – thank you! I also blogged about it for Mind – Exercise, mental health and taking on Ride London.
Community moderation training for OCDAction
Last week I ran a session on community moderation for OCDAction. Unlike my session for Leeds Mind (which was for community managers and focused on developing a moderation strategy) this session was for moderators themselves. OCDAction have an established community but they want to expand their moderator team and make sure their current moderation practices are as…
Standing up to stigma – why I blog about work, projects & my mental health in one place
Pressing pause Every time I go to press ‘publish’ on a tricky post exploring my mental health I pause for a moment. The way my blog has developed means that my personal struggles and successes sit alongside blogs about my work and details of my skills, training and experience. Should I keep them separate? Will employers reject…