By Emma Sneddon
Welcomm Partner with Customer Combat Stress
… To deliver a LIVE Mental Health Q&A session
Thousands of people struggle everyday due to poor mental health.
That is why this Mental Health Awareness Week, we teamed up with customer Combat Stress: The Veterans’ Mental Health Charity to deliver a live streamed mental wellbeing session hosted by Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Dr Naomi Wilson.
Designed to demystify mental health and share why veterans (and others) deal with things differently, the 30 minute session shared some simple strategies people can implement to benefit their own mental health, and the health of others – finishing by answering viewer questions live on the call.
Your Mental Health Questions Answered
Click each question below to reveal expert guidance from Dr Naomi Wilson.
“I know that for most organisations, wellbeing is already high on the agenda. One of the things we’ve been trying to do within Combat Stress is to make wellbeing part of line management – having open discussions with employees so things don’t come up unexpectedly. It’s helpful if Senior Managers can model that as well, in terms of looking after their own wellbeing, so it doesn’t come as a surprise either to the employee or to yourself if difficulties start to arise.
With COVID, now we’re all working at home, we’ve had to understand in much more detail what the home context is for each other in order to not only be at work, but be well at work, and that’s been a learning process for all of us. I think there’s something to say about softening the culture at work, so that we can talk about our feelings – including things at work that are affecting us at home (or vice versa).
I encourage you to have those discussions with members of your team to ask “what happens for you when you start to struggle? Is it that you start to sleep poorly, are you struggling to concentrate, is it that you notice that you’re getting anxious all the time?” If you can start to have those conversations then you can start to notice – and that will help you understand if someone is struggling.”
If we take a moment to sit down and remember how much we are carrying, in all different domains of our lives, it can be really helpful.
Another important note is to be kind to yourself.
If we can give ourselves permission to be kind to ourselves, that also tends to increase our capacity to be kind and compassionate to others and will increase our ability to talk about the things that are difficult. If we can do that, then we can find a solution to it… but if we don’t know there is a problem, then we can’t find a solution to it – it’s all connected.”
More information is available on the Combat Stress website: combatstress.org.uk
Any veteran can self refer in the first instance, but all call handlers are there to talk about the help they need.
If it’s not treatment but rather they need peer support, they will indicate, depending on where they live, a whole range of different options that may be available to them.
There are lots of smaller veterans charities and not-for-profit organisations that offer that support on an ongoing basis, and it can be really vital for a lot of veterans to maintain their wellbeing.”
Thank you Dr Naomi Wilson
Thank you so much to those that joined us live on the session, and of course to Combat Stress. If you found the information useful, a donation to Combat Stress would really help them continue to support veterans across the country.
Otherwise, we are thrilled to be able to offer our customers additional value to support their people. If you’d like to revisit the information shared during the session, the slides can be downloaded below.
