How to blog for Time to Change
Personal blogs and stories can be an incredibly powerful way to talk about mental health and reach hundreds and thousands of people.
Talking about mental health can aid recovery and challenge mental health discrimination and stigma.
Read more about how important blogging is to the Time to Change campaign.
We publish blogs that are about:
- personal experiences of mental health discrimination and stigma
- or experiences of talking about mental health (whether positive or negative).
For example, the blog post could be about an experience of discrimination at work or it could be about a fear of telling a close friend or family member about mental health problems you’ve experienced.
We generally don't publish blogs that focus mainly on:
- mental health policy
- the mental health system
- medication or treatment
If you want to blog about any of the above or your blog doesn't focus primarily on the issue of mental health stigma or discrimination, you can try these alternatives:
- blog for Mind
- set up your own personal blog using Wordpress.com, Tumblr or Blogger.
How to blog for Time to Change
If you’d like to blog for us, please email webmaster@time-to-change.org.uk with...
- a short profile of you that includes your age – no more than 100 words plus a picture that will represent you.
- a sample blog entry – ideally 500-800 words. This should be about your personal experience of mental health stigma and discrimination or an experience of talking about mental health if possible. For example, the post could be about an experience of discrimination at work or it could be about a fear of telling a close friend or family member about mental health problems you’ve experienced. We may edit this, and will check it with you before uploading.
Blogs can be published anonymously. If you are comfortable publishing under your first name we will create an account for you on the website (we will need your email address for this but this will not be publicly visible) to allow you to be notified of and reply to comments.
For help writing your blog, read our 5 top tips for writing blogs and our guidance for blogging about self-harm, suicide and eating disorders.
Video blogs and video pledges
You could also make a video pledge to support our campaign or a video blog about your own experience of mental health stigma
Video pledges can be simple and effective like this one from Lucy or they can be on a more dramatic scale like this one from Beth and Alfie the dog. You can upload them straight to our pledge wall. Pledges are an incredibly important part of our campaign - you can join over 24,000 people in publicly declaring how you will help end mental health stigma and discrimination.
You can also send us a video blog to be published alongside your written blog to help illustrate and explain a key part of it. These should be quite short, ideally 2-5 minutes long, and should focus on a personal experience of mental health stigma or discrimination. If you would like to submit a video blog or would like more information about what type of videos we could publish as blogs on our website please email webmaster@time-to-change.org.uk.
Privacy and online safety resources
If you are interested in blogging for Time to Change but woried about online safety - there are some great resources aimed at younger people but relevant for everyone:
Read our blog and social media comments policy >>
How else can I get involved in the campaign?
You can sign our pledge wall to show your support and find out how talking tackles mental health discrimination.
Or find out all the other ways you can get involved in the campaign.
Need support?
If you are experiencing mental health problems or need urgent support, there are lots of places you can go for help.
We are led by:
