3 Activities To Positively Impact Your Mental Wellbeing

When was the last time you asked someone how they are? 

Who generally finds it easier to say they feel fine?

Tomorrow marks a very crucial day for mental health and wellbeing. It is an opportunity for the nation to raise awareness and break the silence around mental health problems. Time to Talk Day on the 6th of February will influence and support many activities taking place in schools, communities, workplaces and charities throughout the UK. 

Mental health problems can affect one in four of us, yet people are still afraid to be open and talk about it. For people with mental health problems not being able to talk about it can be the worst parts of the illness. Time to Talk Day encourages our friends, family and co-workers to talk about their own mental health. If we get people to talk about how they really feel this can break down some stereotypes, improve our relationships and help take the stigma out of something that affects all of us at some point in our lives. 

Choose to talk and change lives…

If we have more conversations with each other we can break down the barriers and associations with loneliness, shame and worthlessness that many of us feel day to day. This specific day provides an opportunity for your organisation to encourage wider conversations surrounding this topic and introduce new activities within the workplace. 

Does your organisation address mental health stigma in the workplace already?

If you haven’t done so already you can create awareness by taking part in games, social events and activities in order to start up a mental health conversation in a way that doesn’t appear to be too awkward or intimidating. Time to Talk have created an activity pack with games for your workplace or school to use to kick start these conversations.

You can download three activities below which can be used in the workplace:

1) Mental Health Snakes and Ladders 

Mental Health Snakes & Ladders game is designed to bring friends, family, work colleagues and schoolmates together for 20 minutes, whilst also raising awareness of mental health and mental health stigma.

2) Coping Skills Bingo 

This activity provides techniques and coping mechanisms to help those who are living with mental health issues. 

3) Mental Health Wordsearch 

The wordsearch and filling in the gaps activity enables colleagues and students to express how they feel by introducing emotional vocabulary. This game identifies definitions of mental health and refers to statistics to make us aware of mental health problems. 

Time to Talk Day is a great way for employees to share their experience of mental health problems. Each conversation may be different and there are useful tips which can help to support your conversation.

• Find a quiet place with an informal atmosphere

• Use positive body language and encourage a person to continue using comments like ‘What happened next?’

• Reflect back words they have used as this can encourage them to open up more

• Use empathetic statements such as ‘I appreciate this must be difficult’

• Try to leave any questions or comments until the end and don’t interrupt them

To find out about how you can help mental wellbeing of young people try reading our blog Promoting Mental Wellbeing to Young People.