Today is World Mental Health Day. I haven’t written on this blog for ages – I’m sorry for the radio silence – but World Mental Health Day has got me back on here. I have been working on a couple of other things which are available or nearly available to read if you’re interested. I’ve written a piece for The Guardian on trauma which you can see here. I’ve also been working on a bigger project this last year or so – a book about child development – all the juicy experiments and theories that I think would be really useful for everyone to know about – and it’s coming out in March. It’s called Blueprint: How Our Childhood Makes Us Who We Are and it’s available for pre-order on Amazon which is both exciting and terrifying.

World Mental Health day is a great opportunity to pause and think about whether there are ways we could be boosting our own or other people’s mental wellbeing.

It’s easy for simple things that we know are helpful to drift when we’re busy: things like eating well, sleeping enough and being kind to ourselves. It’s easy when we’re stressed and pressurised to forget to ask how others are doing too, and to really listen to what they say when they reply.

Sometimes it can feel overwhelming if someone tells you they’re not feeling ok, and it might leave you feeling helpless – unsure of what to do to help them feel better. But sometimes just the act of asking and listening carefully to the reply is enough. I love this cartoon from Robot Hugs which captures that feeling that someone has really tried to get alongside, not got frustrated by things not getting better immediately. 

The focus of World Mental Health Day this year is mental health in the workplace. Stress at work can be a major problem, in all sorts of professions, and trying to create kinder and more compassionate workplaces is a really important thing that we can all do. It starts with making sure we’re taking care of ourselves, so I hope if you’re reading this it encourages you to think of a kindness you can do for yourself today, as well as something you might be able to do to make a colleague’s life a little easier.