News & Events

Mental health campaign Time to Change Wales is helping to dispel the myths about mental illness by providing people with the facts mental health issues through a free online booklet.

The booklet is available online in English and Welsh and can be downloaded from the Time to Change Wales website via it's Myths and Facts page.

There are many myths about mental illness and the booklet aims to help by supporting people to have a better understanding of mental health issues.

For example, most people think mental health problems are rare but about one in four (25%) of people across Wales and the UK are affected by mental health issues of one kind or another.

Whether or not you have a mental health problem, Time to Change Wales believes downloading and reading the booklet will help you challenge discrimination by improving your everyday knowledge about mental illness.

The campaign believes you don’t need to be an expert on mental health and simply providing yourself with the tools to have an informed conversation about mental health will help to tackle the stigma surrounding this issue across Wales.

The fact is that you probably know someone with a mental health problem - a friend, family member or colleague - and you can support them by reading the Myths and Facts booklet and providing yourself with the knowledge to dispel the myths surrounding their conditions.

Time to Change Wales is led by Mind Cymru, Gofal and Hafal and is a campaign aimed at ending mental health stigma and discrimination within Wales.

It's been a good year for the WaMH in PC wesite with our visitor numbers more than doubling within 2012.

Over the course of the year nearly 5,000 people visited our site in order to find out more about mental health issues and services across Wales.

This was up from the 2,000 who visited in 2011 and shows how far the site has come following its redevelopment at the beginning of last year.

Our visitors viewed more than 20,000 pages on the site with our Information Sheets pages proving the most popular with around a quarter of you heading straight for this section.

The introduction of Part 1 of the Mental Health Measure across the country helped make our Mental Health (Wales) Measure 2010 popular with more than 10% of you heading to this section to find out more about this new legislation.

We also added 2 new sections to the site towards the end of 2012 in the form of our Dementia section and Downloadable Resource which provides mental health professionals with information about Part 1 of the Mental Health Measure.

Finally, our News & Events Blog has also proved to be a success with another 10% of visitors heading to this section on the site.

To find out more about the information available on our site please browse through its various sections and if there's something you can't find please email our Project Manager Lesley Hills at lhills@rcgp.org.uk for help.

We're offering two half-day Practical Dementia events aimed at helping medical professionals and carers improve the lives of those with and affected by dementia across Wales.

These latest events follow the similar successful events on the same subject which we delivered earlier this year and each 3-hour course will cost £30 per delegate.

These practical courses will take place in Cardiff and Wrexham in Spring next year and are specifically aimed at the following mental heath practitioners and roles:

• GPs,
• CPNs (Community Psychiatric Nurses),
• Practice Nurses
• Consultant Psychiatrists
• Health Board Officials
• The Care Home Sector
• The Alzheimer’s Society

The first event will take place in South Wales at the Novotel Hotel in Cardiff on 7th March 2013 from 2pm until 5pm.

While the second event for North Wales will be held at the Ramada Plaza in Wrexham on 18th April 2013 from 2pm until 5pm.

Please note that each course concentrates on practice and not theory in relation to dementia and the proposed agenda for each event will cover the following issues:     

• Memory clinics and the interface with Primary Care
• Social Care – Interface Issues
• Vascular Dementia
• Dementia from a Carers Perspective – Interaction with Primary Care

To register for either event please contact our Project Manager Lesley Hills via email at lhills@rcgp.org.uk or for a registration form call 029 2050 4516.