This morning I’ll be in a classroom urging a group of post-registration community nurses to embrace the idea that mental health is everybody’s business. It’s a session I regularly get to do on the School of Healthcare Sciences’ Fundamentals of Community Practice module. We’ll be looking at rates of mental ill-health within populations, and at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines on depression. We’ll also get to think about what district nurses, health visitors and others can do to promote mental health in their day-to-day work.
This is a session where I additionally get to introduce people to Healthtalkonline. This is an excellent resource for everyone: teachers, practitioners, service users and carers. Here’s how it describes itself:
People’s stories: see, hear and read their experiences…
Healthtalkonline is the award-winning website of the DIPEx charity. Healthtalkonline and its sister website, Youthhealthtalk, let you share in more than 2,000 people’s experiences of over 60 health-related conditions and illnesses. You can watch video or listen to audio clips of the interviews, read about people’s experiences if you prefer and find reliable information about specific conditions, treatment choices and support.
The information on Healthtalkonline relies on external funding and is based on qualitative research into health experiences, led by experts at the University of Oxford. These personal stories of health and illness will enable patients, families, carers and healthcare professionals to benefit from the experiences of others.
Healthtalkonline has a repository of clips in which people talk about their personal experiences of mental health difficulties. I have it on good authority that there is more on the way, too, so this is a site to keep coming back to.
Ben Hannigan's blog 