Even small actions can help us feel hopeful and less powerless. — Mental Health Foundation Organised by the Mental Health Foundation, Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) is an annual campaign to highlight the importance of good mental health. MHAW 2026 runs from May 11–17, inclusive. Previous themes have included body image, kindness, nature, loneliness, anxiety, movement, and community. The theme for MHAW 2026 is action. Action: for yourself, for someone else, for all of us We’ve chosen Action as this year’s theme because, while awareness is vital, real change comes when we take action too. Together, we’ve come a long way on mental health, but we can’t risk going backwards. There’s still much we can do to prevent people becoming unwell in the first place. We can interpret the call to action in many ways. Inspired by a recent conversation the action I’ve chosen to focus on is encouragement. That might not seem particularly relevant or useful given the challenges we f...
By Lisa Judson If anyone had told me two years ago that I’d be swimming in open water, all through the year, in temperatures that sometimes go down to the minus figures, I would, without doubt, have told them EXACTLY where to go! But here we are, two years on and guess what I’m doing, between two and four times a week on average?! The way it worked was that my therapist tried for more than two years to get me to try it. She explained how good it was for your central nervous system and how it would help to reset my brain. She even took me to the lake where I now swim around four times a week. I laughed and said, (this is the polite, publishable version by the way) “not a chance — but the oat milk decaf latte was ok — so I’d come down and join you for one of those.” About six months later I was standing at the edge of the lake, in a wetsuit, with her encouraging me to just step in for a moment. It has to be said that my ADHD brain is a little tinker for helping me into an “all or...