Mental Health Awareness Week – let’s unite to combat loneliness

Mental Health Awareness Week starts today and the aim for 2022 is to tackle loneliness.

The Mental Health Foundation explains that one in four adults feels lonely some or all of the time. You don’t have to be alone to feel lonely. The charity is asking people to unite to combat loneliness by sharing a time when they felt lonely, but it might not have been seen:

Mental Health Awareness Week starts today! Let's tackle loneliness together. Start by saying #IveBeenThere:

1. Share a photo of a time you felt lonely & nobody knew
2. Add the hashtags #IveBeenThere & #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek
3. Tag @mentalhealth

Share your story ?? pic.twitter.com/v3nXGhwgu7

— Mental Health Foundation (@mentalhealth) May 9, 2022

A range of resources are available from the Mental Health Foundation. We have also linked to Harper Adams sources of help further below.

The Loneliness and Mental Health Report UK

The Student Guide to Loneliness

The Loneliness Guide for Education Staff

Help for Harper Adams staff

Harper Adams University works with Health Assured to provide an enhanced Employee Assistance Programme (EAP). The programme allows employees to directly access counselling, legal information and advice on debt, work, lifestyle addictions and relationships. Contact details are shared with employees every week through an internal newsletter. Employees also receive wellbeing support from line managers and our Chaplaincy, HR and Mental Health First Aid teams; in addition to occupational health services provided by Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust.

Help for Harper Adams students

We all have mental health and we encourage our students to reach out if they are experiencing any difficulties. It’s important to look after our mental health just as we do our physical wellbeing. You may be a student at the start or end of your student journey, or somewhere in between, or a member of the wider university community. You may feel you can talk to friends, your course team, colleagues and or your GP but the important thing to remember is no problem is too small and it can help to talk things through. It is never too late to let someone know how you are feeling and asking for help. At University, specialist support can be offered via self-referral to the wellbeing team, by accessing the Student Assistance Programme or talking to one of the Mental Health First Aiders. Further details can be found here.