Hello and welcome to the COPE Project’s June update and blog. We are eagerly embracing the beginning of the Great British Summer!
Photo by Nathan Anderson
Since our last blog/update, we have been busy on finding ways to share our research findings, as well as developing new studies. Additionally, we look back on Mental Health Awareness Week, which took place last May.
Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week (May 1-7, 2017)
In the first week of May, the spotlight was focussed on Maternal Mental Health. In the UK, there were various activities both online and offline, which involved sharing strategies to protect mums’ and families’ mental health, and information on available services. National Maternal Mental Health Coalition’s (USA) 2017 campaign was #ConnectTheDots, which invites groups, individuals, communities and organisations to help in raising awareness for perinatal mental health. To express our support, below we share various resources with our community:
- Find out your good mental health score through this survey
- Download the pregnancy and post-birth wellbeing plan here
- A hints and tips article from Metro on how to help a partner with mental health illness
Mental Health Awareness Week (May 8-14, 2017)
Following Maternal Mental Health Awareness week was Mental Health Awareness week, which also featured perinatal mental health. For example, ITV featured The Smile Group and its work on supporting families affected by perinatal illness, which you can watch here. The BBC’s Mind Over Marathon showed us the various ways that mental health issues can affect everyone, regardless of their background.
On the whole, these two weeks focussing on mental health were very important in reducing the stigma and getting the conversation going about mental health. With over 4 in 10 people reporting to experience depression (Mental Health Foundation, 2017), actions to improve mental health and build resilience in society are key.
*Views expressed in this blog post are solely of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views, position, or policies of the University.
Cope News/Notices
As mentioned in the May blog, Ryc will be presenting the findings from the interview study with midwives and health visitors in September at the British Psychological Society’s Division of Health Psychology Conference in Cardiff. We are grateful to our participants, as well as the School of Health Sciences for funding Ryc’s attendance at this conference. We have also submitted abstracts to other conferences, and we will let you know of the outcome of these in due course. Finally, we are awaiting ethical approval for a focus group study with women who have had a child in the last 18 months regarding their experiences of collaborative care as provided by midwives and health visitors. We will provide more information as soon as we are able.
As ever, we would love to hear from you! Let us know what you think of our blog post, or ask us any questions regarding the COPE project via cope@city.ac.uk.
Until then,
– Team COPE
Leave a Reply