Come along, watch, join in…
On Saturday May 18th, as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, we will be in Charter Square in the Arc Shopping Centre in Bury St Edmunds, in front of The Apex, for a whole day of events aiming to raise awareness about the difficulty in identifying signs of mental health problems in young people.
The plan for the day is to include:
Talk to an expert:
If you are worried about your own mental health, or that of someone you know, you can talk to an expert on the Day.
A number of local mental health professionals have volunteered to join us during the day. You can talk to them in complete confidence.
We’ll also have a list of local mental health services, as well as leaflets and booklets about mental health for you to read and take away.
Interactive events:
There will be interactive events to boost positivity, including:
Positivity tree: write something – maybe a message of encouragement to someone who is suffering – and hang it on our positive thinking sculpture. We hope to feature this as a display in an art exhibition later in the year.
Music, song, dance and theatre: we have some great projects from Westley Middle School, County Upper and local artists in development for performance on the day. More info to follow when possible. Watch this space.
Stories and poetry: we will have a story circle, where we will be telling stories and reciting poetry. Many of these will be based on the personal experiences of our volunteers. Come and listen – or tell your own if you have one that you want to share.
Postcards to our MPs: have you got something to say which our local MPs We’re hoping to get hundreds of people to write postcards to them. These postcards have space for you to write something personally if you want – maybe a suggestion about more they can do locally?
After the Awareness Day, a couple of our Young People are going to hand-deliver these postcards to Matt and Jo. Please help us to make their post-bags as big as possible!
We’re collecting postcards to deliver to:
Matt Hancock MP Matt is MP for West Suffolk. By a happy coincidence, Matt is also Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care. So, as Health Secretary, young people’s mental health is firmly on Matt’s radar.
Jo Churchill MP Jo is MP for Bury St Edmunds. In June 2018 Jo set up a local Young Persons Mental Health working group, which has looked at how it might benefit local schools and colleges – such as Thurston Community College, which now employs a full-time clinical psychologist.