It can be difficult to talk about mental health directly to a person. Mental health is rarely a subject of conversation - much less so than physical health. Yet it is equally as important.
When I was feeling low, I found it easiest to talk about my mental health with people who I had heard bring the subject up beforehand: not necessarily their own mental health but the whole concept of it.
Like I say in the video, I found it easiest to talk to people who cared enough to ask how I was feeling, and these few small words can be a way to show that you care.
As one of the other videos says, it needn’t be all you talk about - you need to keep other day-to-day stuff in there too. Sometimes when people talked to me, I didn’t feel able to answer, but I knew that the person who had asked me was interested and cared, and I would go back to them when I needed to on subsequent occasions.
The very fact this video has been made shows how the barriers around mental health are starting to come down, and by letting my voice- that of a person with lived experience of mental health problems- be heard, I hope to open up the dialogue even more!
