Free Wellbeing Workshops for staff during Mental Health Awareness Week, 11-17 May!

Mental Health Awareness Week 2015 will take place from 11-17 May on the topic of Mindfulness, and to support this event, the Staff Counselling Service is running some free wellbeing workshops, open to all members of staff.

Please click on the links below to find out more about each event and to book (places are limited).

Monday 11 May

• 11:00-12:00 – Mindfulness and Depression*, Room 027b, Hadyn Ellis Building

Tuesday 12 May

• 12:30-13:30 – Time to Change Champion Talk, Committee Room 2, Glamorgan Building

Thursday 14 May

• 12:30-13:30 – Five Ways to Wellbeing*, The Training Room, 1^st Floor, 47 Park Place

You can contact the Staff Counselling Service by phoning 02920 879572 or by emailing staffcounselling@cardiff.ac.uk

*This session will finish with a ten minute presentation, from a member of the Cardiff University Sport team, about how physical activity can have benefits for your mental health.

Mindfulness and Depression

This workshop looks at how you can use Mindfulness in the treatment of depression. Although not the only effective strategy available to you, Mindfulness has demonstrated, in various areas of research, its effectiveness across the spectrum of mental ill health, including depression, especially recurrent depression, anxiety, stress, eating disorders, addiction and others.

The Benefits of Physical Activity to our Mental Health

Find out why being physically active has long been known to be beneficial for our mental health. Research has shown that physical activity can boost self-esteem and help you to concentrate, sleep, and look and feel better. Becoming physically active doesn’t have to cost anything and you don’t even have to reach for your lycra! Cardiff University Sport will show you how to get started.

Time to Change Champion Talk

We’re delighted to welcome along one of the Time to Change Champions, who will be helping you to understand what it is like to experience mental ill-health and what a huge impact stigma and discrimination can have on the individual who is experiencing the mental health issue, both in and out of work.

Attitudes towards people with mental health problems means it is harder for them to work, make friends and in short, live a normal life.  Consequently, people become isolated and excluded from everyday activities.  It is harder to get or keep a job.  They can be reluctant to seek help, which makes recovery slower and more difficult.

Many people say that being discriminated against in work and social situations can be a bigger burden than the illness itself.  It has an impact on society and the economy too, when people who can work are denied the opportunity to, and when people are prevented from playing an active role in their communities.

Time to Change Wales is the first national campaign in Wales to end the stigma and discrimination faced by people with mental health problems.

Time to Change Wales Champions are volunteers with lived experience of mental health problems who are at the heart of the Time to Change Wales campaign, challenging stigma in their own communities, campaigning in the media and sharing their experiences of living with mental health problems. These Champions feel strongly about challenging stigma and discrimination so bravely stand up and tell their stories, at community groups, organisations and places of employment around Wales.

Five Ways to Wellbeing

This workshop will explore ways in which you might to gain some simple tips to achieve a more positive outlook. If you give them a try, you may feel happier, more positive and be able to improve your wellbeing.

Scientific evidence points to five steps that you can take to help improve your mental wellbeing. The Five Ways to Wellbeing are a set of evidence-based actions which promote people’s actions to help improve wellbeing. They are:

• Connect
• Be Active
• Take Notice
• Keep Learning
• Give

These activities are simple things you can do in your everyday life both at work and at home. There’s more to good mental health than avoiding or treating mental illness – there is also positive mental wellbeing.