News & Events

The Welsh Assembley and various national charities are launching a groundbreaking mental health campaign allowing people to literally air their views about mental health across Wales.

Over the summer the Lights! Camera! ACTION! campaign will give mental health service users and carers the opportunity to record messages and share their experiences of mental health services on film.

As part of the campaign, people will be produce their own video blogs pointing local services and national policy makers to good practice in mental health service delivery and flag up local deficits in delivery.

Service users and carers will talk to camera about what changes they want to see in services with the help of the campaign which is due to set up a mobile studio at 22 locations across Wales over the coming months.

Health Minister Mark Drakeford AM will launch the service user and carer-led national campaign at the Pierhead Building today (9 May) with the campaign set to conclude with a red-carpet event at the Senedd on World Mental Health Day in October.

Lights! Camera! ACTION! is supported by mental health charities Bipolar UK, Hafal and the Mental Health Foundation with further information available on the Lights! Camera! ACTION! Campaign page on the Hafal website.

If you're a GP or medical student you might want to take a look at Doctors.net.uk which is a free network used by more than 40,000 doctors eeach week.

Doctors.net.uk is an active network of GMC authenticted doctors which has nearly 200,000 members offering a range of online resources and services.

If you are a doctor all you need to sign up is your GMC registration details and if you're a medical student just have details of your medical school and course to hand.

The site offers a 24-hour forum which connects doctors right across the UK , an online journal, case report and medical image library, around 240 free, accredited online training modules and excluse medical news and job alerts alongside research facilities and monthly podcasts covering key medical events.

Members also receive an exclusive, free-to-use email account using the doctors.org.uk domain which - unlike other web-based email services - is accepted in NHS Trusts.

For further details about what the site has to offer or if you would like to join please visit the Doctors.net.uk Members Benefit page.

Just a little bit more about the success of the campaigning which has led to a reduction in mental health discrimination within the UK.

The Time to Change project has successfully challenged people's perceptions about mental health issues Earlier as outlined in our Study Shows Fall in Mental Health Discrimination post last week.

A study by The British Journal of Psychiatry revealed that people who had seen the Time to Change campaign were more likely to have better knowledge, attitudes and behaviour towards people with mental health problems than those who had not.

The research uncovered significant changes among this group concerning their perception of the common social stigmas surrounding mental illness and you can read it for free on The British Journal of Psychiatry website.

Time to Change is now in its 2nd phase with funding from the Department of Health and Comic Relief with the current programme reflecting much of the findings presented by the in these results.

This includes implementing a strategic focus on the media, the extension of social contact alongside social marketing and a pilot project with primary care staff.

To find out more about the programme as a whole please read Sharing the learning from England’s biggest mental health anti-stigma and discrimination programme on the Time to Change website.