TalkBack - Winter 2022

Highlights

Our trip to COP26

As part of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), the Mental Health Foundation hosted the COP26 Citizen’s Forum on Climate Change and Mental Health. This was a community participation event which brought together not only health practitioners, policymakers and academics, but also representatives and activists from those communities most at risk from climate change effects.

Policy ask becomes law

Mental Health Awareness Week 2021 recognised the link between nature and mental health. We joined the State of Nature campaign, calling for a legally binding target to end nature’s decline by 2030 to be included in the Environment Bill.

The Campaign amassed 208,000 signatures to its petition and in August 2021 the Government amended the Bill and the amended final Act passed into law in November 2021. 

This makes the UK the first country in the world with a legally binding target to halt nature’s decline, something that is essential for the health of our planet, and for our mental health.

Programmes

We spotlight Picture This, a digital creative programme to help older people access the internet.

Campaigns

We catch up with a Programmes Trainee on our Mind Over Mirror campaign, focussing on promoting positive mental health and raising awareness of underrepresented body image matters.

Research

In November the Mental Health Foundation in Scotland published the findings of the first year of its Thriving Learners study - one of the most significant, and potentially largest, studies of students’ mental health that has ever taken place in the UK.