October 10th is World Mental Health Day each year. The day is an opportunity to raise awareness of mental health and for organisations working in mental health to talk about what needs to be done to improve access to and provisions for care and services worldwide.
The theme for 2017’s World Mental Health Day was mental health in the workplace. So, at Health Exchange, we teamed up with partner organisation the Living Well Consortium for a ‘Food and Mood’ event. We’d like to say a big thank you to Marks and Spencer for kindly donating the delicious healthy food!
We strongly believe that one of the ways a person can start to improve their wellbeing is through food. A healthy diet is not only important for a healthy body, but also for a healthy mind. There is a growing body of research pointing to a link between nutrition and mental wellbeing. It seems that a number of mental health conditions may be influenced by diet and people who report mental health issues tend to eat unhealthier diets (Mental Health Foundation).
The idea of our event was to start a conversation amongst employees about how we can improve our wellbeing at work. Suggestions included bringing in a healthy packed lunch, taking a brisk five or ten minute walk as a break, sitting with good posture and having a friendly conversation with a colleague.
Our Senior Practitioner Rosemarie offers this advice on other ways to improve health and wellbeing:
Connecting – with other people
Learning – something new so we feel challenged and stimulated
Exercise – keep yourself moving to reduce stress
Acts of kindness – helps us feel good too
Notice – our environment and the positive things in life
CLEAN
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