This is Me is committed to changing attitudes around mental health
This is Me is committed to changing attitudes around mental health and strives to create healthier and more inclusive workplaces by reducing stigma, dispelling myths, and improving employee wellbeing for good.
It does this through three key strands –
- This is Me Storytelling, where organisations encourage their employees to open the conversation around mental health by sharing their personal experiences;
- The Green Ribbon Campaign which sees employees to wear green ribbons, physically and virtually, to visibly show their support for ending the stigma;
- and Wellbeing in the Workplace, an online training in which businesses upskill their employees in having conversations about mental health.
It is part of The Lord Mayor’s Appeal’s strategy to create A Better City For All, and sits under our ‘Healthy’ pillar. You can see more here – www.thelordmayorsappeal.org/a-healthy-city We work closely with a number of businesses who have run This is Me in their organisations, many of whom would like to share their experiences with the wider business landscape. Here’s one…
AQA ran its first This is Me campaign in 2019 where we had seven colleagues share their experiences of either living with a mental health condition or caring for someone with a mental health condition.
As one of the organisers of the campaign, for me the best part was seeing colleagues come together for the launch in our two main offices, one of which was at standing room only. We received an enormous amount of positive feedback from colleagues and it generated lots of great conversations about mental health. It also inspired colleagues to volunteer to become Mental Health First Aiders or sign up to help the wellbeing movement in other ways.
The campaign has contributed to helping AQA move our culture towards becoming an even more caring and mentally healthy place to be. During a recent business wide survey, Wellbeing appeared as the number one positive cultural attribute of AQA which is something we’re very proud of.
We’ve already had volunteers sign up to the next round of This is Me but due to Covid-19 we have decided to pause the campaign until 2021.