A new free and confidential digital mental health and wellbeing service for adults is now available across Devon, Plymouth and Torbay.
Qwell (www.qwell.io), delivered by mental health provider Kooth , will ensure that every adult living in the Devon has access to a choice of support to managing their own emotional health and wellbeing.
NHS Devon, working in partnership with Devon, Plymouth and Torbay Councils, has commissioned Qwell to provide all adults aged 18+ with free, anonymous, confidential digital mental health support.
You don’t have to be the most well-informed person in the world to know that spending time outside is good for us. Fresh air, exercise, absorbing that all-important vitamin D naturally; take your pick of the benefits. But is there more to simply wandering around in nature than we realise? Might there be less obvious signs that we’re reaping the rewards as we walk the dog?
Theodore Rosak certainly thought so. In his book published in 1992, he coined the phrase ‘ecopsychology’. Beautifully self-explanatory, Rosak used the term to describe the study of the mental health benefits of...
Mental health charity, Step One, has been supporting people in Devon with mental health and learning disabilities for 85 years, working closely with local NHS Trusts, GP surgeries and communities across the county. With mental health problems increasing and a reported 1 in 5 people now showing signs of depression (compared to 1 in 10 before the COVID-19 pandemic), the ‘BeWell@StepOne’ project was launched to provide support to as many people as possible across Devon. Through online courses, workshops, support groups and learning opportunities, BeWell@StepOne helps people to manage their...
A new fund, launched in memory of Juliet Garmoyle, aims to transform children’s mental health support in Devon and the South West of England.
The Juliet Garmoyle Fund was launched in March at her memorial service held at Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Square, attended by over 600 people. The Fund will enable leading children’s mental health charity Place2Be to extend its vital school-based support into the South West of England for the first time.
Hugh, Juliet’s husband, has already pledged £1 million to help establish the fund. An additional 136 donors have already...
Almost a third (31%) of employees in the South West don’t feel comfortable opening up about their mental health issues and concerns to anyone at work, a new survey shows.
The findings come from Just Eat for Business for Mental Health Awareness Week - which takes place between the 9th and 15th May - to encourage employers to provide a safe space for employees to discuss mental health concerns, including stress, anxiety and burnout.
It’s concerning that a large proportion of the region’s employees don’t feel able to ask for help from colleagues, HR professionals or...
The deterioration in people’s mental health linked to COVID-19 is showing no sign of returning to pre-pandemic levels, a new study finds.
Researchers from the University of Exeter Business School and the Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow used the UK Household Longitudinal Study to compare the mental health of more than 10,000 UK individuals.
They found that on average mental distress in the height of the pandemic in April 2020 was 11 percent higher than it was before the pandemic in 2017-19.
But in March 2021, amid the vaccine roll-out and...
Childline has found boys are five times less likely to talk with the service’s trained counsellors about their mental health than girls, and even less likely to come to them when they have suicidal thoughts.
New statistics from the NSPCC-run service show in 2020/21 they carried out 31,899 counselling sessions with girls about mental health issues compared to 5,622 with boys.
When it came to counselling sessions about suicidal thoughts and feelings, they delivered 11,719 with girls but just 1,592 with boys.
Despite fewer boys talking to Childline about feeling...
New research by Acas has found that over a third (35%) of British employers have not spoken to their staff about their mental health and wellbeing over the past year during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Acas commissioned YouGov to ask businesses in Britain about whether they had personally talked to their staff about their mental health in the last 12 months during the pandemic. The poll found that:
Nearly three out of five (59%) had spoken to staff;
Nearly one in five adults surveyed in the South West (17 per cent) who say their mental health got worse during the pandemic haven’t spoken to anyone about it during this time – equivalent to around 250,000 people – according to research published today. More than a third (38 per cent) of all respondents in the South West reported a worsening in their mental health during the pandemic. Of those who have been concerned about the mental health of someone they care about, almost one in five (19 per cent) say they haven’t tried to talk to them about it.
Online festival launched to help primary school pupils manage mental health
Buckfast Abbey is readying itself to lift the mood and mental wellbeing of primary school children across the UK with the launch of its largest ever festival to help children cope with the stresses of daily life.
Starting on Monday 11th October, the Take 5 Festival - a virtual event created by the Abbey’s Education Department - builds on the success of last year’s inaugural, week-long event, which saw schools from as far as Cumbria, Yorkshire and Kent getting involved.
