Mental Health Information

The label mental illness is highly stigmatising. It encourages people to think of 'the mentally ill' as an entirely separate category from 'people like us', rather than as ordinary people who have, for whatever reason, more severe emotional difficulties to cope with. Popular misconceptions, fuelled by the media, depict mentally ill people as violent and dangerous. These stereotypes are contradicted by ordinary people's experiences of mental health problems affecting themselves, their family members, friends or work colleagues.

 

Mental Health Tips & Questions

What are mental health problems?
Mental health problems range from the worries and grief we all experience as part of everyday life, to the most bleak, suicidal depression or complete loss of touch with every day reality.

On average one in four of us will experience a mental health problem in the course of a year. These problems can cause real and lasting damage, both to the individual and to the community. Fortunately the majority of people who experience mental health problems can get over them or learn to live with them especially if they get help early on.

Unfortunately many people experiencing a mental health problem don't receive the right kind of help and some don't receive any help at all. In fact many people with mental health problems are shunned or discriminated against by their families, friends and the professionals who are supposed to be caring for them.