To coincide with this years’ Time to Talk Day, which took place on Thursday, Solent Mind has released its brand-new podcast, Cause for Conversation, focused on normalising conversations around mental health.
The new series will cover a variety of mental health topics and will feature trained professionals from across Hampshire’s largest mental health charity, as well as stories from its service users and volunteers.
Launching the podcast on Time to Talk Day, a national awareness day which aims to get the nation talking about their mental health, Solent Mind wanted to highlight the importance of having open conversations about how we are really feeling.
In the podcast’s very first episode, ‘The Power of Peer Support’, peer support specialists, Becky Hawke and Dr Katt Petersen, chat to host Jenna Lloyd about the charity’s award-winning peer support approach and how people from across Hampshire have benefitted from receiving this type of support.
Over 80% of Solent Mind staff report having lived experience of mental health issues and this is reflected not only in the peer-support model, but also in the charity’s values and strategic ambitions for the next three years. Through one-to-ones and peer groups, the charity’s peer support workers across the region facilitate safe, supportive spaces where service users commonly report feeling ‘heard’, ‘validated’ and ‘understood’.
Becky Hawke, Senior Workplace Wellbeing Trainer for Solent Mind’s Workplace Wellbeing Training team, said: “What is different and joyful about Solent Mind is that so many of us come with lived experience. There is an element of shared understanding. We’re all working to the same values, and I think that’s what makes us really special.”
The podcast explores how peer support is flexible and can be tailored and adapted to each person’s needs, even if these change over the course of the support.
Katt, Peer Support Specialist at NHS Talking Therapies Hampshire – part of Solent Mind, added: “It’s all about showing people they’re not alone in their struggles and providing them with the hope that they can develop healthy coping strategies that work for them based on their own strengths, just as we have in our own mental health journeys.”
Katt and Becky also talk about mental health recovery, and how this varies for different individuals:
“Recovery looks different for everyone. We’re never going to expect each person to go in the same direction. What recovery is, is a place where you can thrive, and everybody thrives under different conditions.”
Cause for Conversation will be released regularly, and future episodes will cover topics such as bipolar awareness, gardening for mental health, money and mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.
Time to Talk Day is held at the beginning of February every year by Rethink Mental Illness and Mind, delivered in partnership with Co-op. It is about helping people and communities to come together to have the nation’s biggest mental health conversation.
Cause for Conversation, a podcast from Solent Mind, is available to stream now on Spotify and YouTube.
Listen here: solentmind.org.uk/cause_for_conversation
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