Salon chat in the 'Heads Up' campaign

Case study: Salon chat in the ‘Heads Up!’ campaign

Run by the East of England Strategic Health Authority

An innovative campaign in the East of England, in conjunction with Time to Change, encouraged hairdressers and their clients to replace polite salon small talk with chat about mental health.

The East of England SHA led the Heads Up! campaign to engage hairdressers and barbers as a route to encouraging greater openness about mental health, with all the mental health trusts in the region involved.

Why hairdressers?

Hairdressers may seem like an unusual audience – but their working day involves talking to a whole range of people, who often open up to their hairdresser while in the salon chair. So they’re perfectly placed to start conversations about mental health, help get the issue out in the open and encourage people to share their experiences.

Time to Change resources

Salons taking part were provided with Time to Change materials as a prompt to get customers talking. The materials gave easy starting points for conversation, such as myths and facts about mental health, and the celebrities supporting the campaign.

Having leaflets to hand also meant hairdressers could easily pass on information and details about where to go for support without being experts: they aren’t expected to become counsellors, after all. Their role in the campaign was simply to open up the issue, and get the message across that it’s OK to talk about mental health.

Engaging across the region

Each mental health trust in the area aimed to get as many salons on their patch involved as they could – resulting in a total of over 400 salons on board with the campaign across the region. Each trust engaged with hairdressers in its own way, by visiting salons, making contact by phone or posting campaign materials, but all were guided by a toolkit created by the coordinating team. 

How did it do?

Feedback from some participating salons suggests that hairdressers and customers alike have embraced the campaign.

You don’t really know how people are going to react to this subject and more people talked about it than I expected

There were a lot of people talking the issue of mental health, both the staff and the clients.

I mentioned my neighbour has depression and I wanted to know how to help. The hairdresser mentioned the campaign and to direct my neighbour to the GP.

Evaluation of the campaign showed that:

• Where materials have been placed in salons there have been good levels of campaign recall by clients.

• The evidence suggests that the materials have generated discussion of mental illness in the salons.

• Salons are clearly felt to be an appropriate forum to raise awareness of the issue – with both staff and clients alike comfortable speaking about mental illness.