Building Mental Health

Over the last several decades the rise in mental illness has increased both locally in Scotland and the UK, as well as globally across the world. The World Health Organisation now recognises that depression is the leading cause of disability world wide.  The evidence suggests that there are different things we can do to help prevent, minimise and manage these depression levels – especially for mild to moderate depression.

The Children’s Wood has been focusing on the prevention of mental illness through working with schools and the community to get children outside and to help support good mental health. We have a strong belief that by starting as early as possible to promote  healthy lifestyle habits then we can make a bigger impact on the child’s later life.   There is so much more that we could be doing to support adult mental health and this is something we want to focus on.  Though we have been working on this obliquely through our community events and bringing people to the land, we do recognise that there is so much more that could be done, especially to support the local health services.

This is why when we came across The Conservation Volunteers  Five Ways to Well being (5WW) Programme we were very keen for them to lead the 6 week programme on the Children’s Wood and North Kelvin Meadow. The 5WW programme is an evidenced based course which focuses around 5 different ways to build mental  well-being: Learning, Giving, Noticing, Connecting and Being active. Anyone is welcome to come along to these sessions.  If you are a doctor, health centre or a community organisation then you can let patients/clients know about this course.  You can find out more through the flyers below.    We have applied for funding so that hopefully we can continue this programme over the next year and a half. The course begins on Friday 16th February, 1-3pm and is on for 6 weeks.