Time to Change

It’s not always about raising funds for a particular cause; sometimes it’s just raising awareness. This is what I want to achieve with this month’s ’cause of the month’. I am giving a big shout out for ‘Time to Change’.

Question: Why are we ashamed to admit we have an illness whose symptoms express themselves in our minds rather than in our physical and tangible body? If we have asthma or diabetes, a broken leg or are short sighted we don’t hide them away, we’re not reluctant to say we have a problem. When it comes to depression or anorexia, schizophrenia or an anxiety disorder, we shy away because of what other people might think of us; how they will value us. With so many mental illnesses having biological causes / contributing factors, then what’s the difference?

With 1 in 4 people in the UK being effected by mental illness, it’s well and truly time to change how we view these conditions. This is exactly what ‘Time to Change‘ is trying to do. This is what they say about themselves:

“Time to Change is England’s biggest ever attempt to end the stigma and discrimination that faces people with mental health problems. It is a campagin to change attitudes, and behaviour too. One in four of us will experience a mental health problem in our lifetime – and if we do, we are highly likely to face stigma and discrimination from others.”

It is an anti-stigma programme that is led by 2 large mental health charities – Mind & Rethink.

The campaign gets funds from the Big Lottery Fund and Comic Relief, but as I said it’s not just about raising money – it’s about raising awareness and this is a topic I firmly believe needs to be talked about a lot more.

Time to Change doesn’t just want to change attitudes, although I think that’s a challenge in itself, but it also wants to change behaviour.

All this starts with a simple step – a conversation whether you have a mental illness, or you know someone that has.

Being a huge football fan, one of the projects I’m most excited about is Time to Change’s link with football. They’ve already teamed up with The FA, The Premier League, The Professional Footballers’ Association and many more football based organisations to form a football and mental health action group. This group encourages clubs to run mental health activities as part of their community work, mental health training for coaches and campaign activity on match days and with football clubs, including showing advertising on big screens, holding match day events and including messages in programmes. So if you’re a football lover like me – keep an eye out for this. And be reassured that if it’s okay for your football heroes then it’s alright for you too.

The Time to Change website is full of events, ideas, resources about how to really make a difference. Please do check them out. Failing that, just please be aware of mental health conditions, make yourself more familiar with what they really are and most of all TALK (and if you’re on Facebook or Twitter etc, please share this post, we need to spread the word and get the conversation started).

On my other blog ‘It’s Okay To Talk’ I go into more detail about various mental illnesses, the common misconceptions about them, their causes and the treatments in an attempt to get people to see what lies behind mental illness and to dispel the fears that have surrounded them for years. I believe if people begin to see them for what they truly are, the stigma that they are engulfed in will disappear. So, if you have any questions about any mental illness do read the entries there.