As it was mental health awareness week 10th-16th May, hosted by the Mental Heath Foundation we felt after the challenging year everyone has had it was very important to acknowledge and highlight the importance of mental health and to break the stigma of mental health being a taboo subject and making sure we are all checking in with our friends, family and colleagues. The theme this year was ‘Nature’. After long months of the lockdown, millions of us turned to nature. Research has shown that going for walks outside was one of the top coping strategies and 45% of us reported being in green spaces as being vital for our mental health.  Over the past year we encouraged that our residents to go out for lots of walks and weather permitting we carried out day-care activities in the garden so everyone enjoyed spending time outside in the fresh air.

Last week we created a “positivity board” for the staff and residents, see pictures below. It included positive quotes and helpline telephone numbers. As the theme was nature, we created a positive quote tree , encouraging the staff and residents to write their own positive quotes and pin them on the tree. The residents also really enjoyed going outside to complete their nature scavenger hunt. Each resident had their own clip board and they went around the grounds to find various objects such as twigs, feathers and tick them off their sheet. Everyone had a fantastic time and everyone’s scavenger hunt sheets with their findings were displayed on the board for everyone to see their wonderful work.

Hope you all are keeping well and enjoying the sunshine.