Focusing on our mental health

This month for our Better Health at Work Award we are focusing on Mental Health.

The Society is focusing on a different topic each week. These include healthy eating, stress, work/life balance, sleep, and exercise and how all of these factors can have an impact on our mental health and we have secured help and guidance from two outside sources.

The first is Laura Reside-Robb who is an Integrative Psychotherapist, and a Registered Member of the British Association of Counselling Psychotherapy. Laura has provided the Society with some really useful information about supporting mental health at work. You can find out more about Laura and the services she offers at Carlisle Counselling

The second is Josh Dowson who is a personal training instructor and owns Dowson fitness. Josh has 5 years of experience working with men and women of different ages, abilities and confidence levels creating bespoke fitness plans for individuals. Josh has held fitness classes pre lockdown and works with people either privately or in small groups in his private studio. Josh also has online programmes that have helped many people stay motivated throughout lockdown.

In the first week, the Society focused on healthy eating and how this affects our mental health. Josh provided us with information on the basics of healthy eating and the positive impact eating healthily can make for our mental health. If we don’t eat enough nutrients, we can be lethargic, experience headaches and lack of concentration which has a sub-conscious knock-on effect with our mental health. Josh set the Society our first challenge which was to consume a mixture of ten fruits and vegetables each day.

Week two is focused on stress with information being provided to the team about how to better control and cope with it. We are also looking at how to understand what triggers the feelings of stress on an individual level. Weeks three, four and five will be focused on how getting the correct work/life balance, getting enough sleep and regular exercise can all help to improve our mental health.

We will be receiving further information on all of the topics from both Josh and Laura along with the resources provided by BHAWA and this will hopefully help all of our staff improve and manage their mental health.

The Society takes the mental health of our staff very seriously and will continue to do so once this challenge has been completed as we have throughout the pandemic in particular.