Spring Newsletter
Updated: May 23, 2021
Hi all,
We are incredibly grateful for our growing community, and sharing this journey with you has been a powerful learning curve. From our previous customer survey, we feel we have greater insight into staying connected and meeting the needs of our community. As a jumping-off point, we will be using this space more frequently to highlight the motivations and issues that inspire and fuel Common Sense. Expect more unique looks behind the scenes, stories about collaborators, entries on our creative process and info on the environmental and social causes that drive our business practices.
So what's been going down? This week we've been reflecting on it being Mental Health Awareness month. A subject close to our heart and catalyst for launching Common Sense. Following what has been a challenging year for most, new attitudes towards prioritizing mental well-being have emerged. As we experienced the impact of being separated, the necessity of checking in with one another (and ourselves) became a crucial practice of survival.
We want to encourage taking wisdom from this collective experience to help normalize being proactive about mental health. Let us shift our focus away from conversations around mental health framed as a statistic and instead make space for new and more inclusive definitions of mental well-being. The truth is, not all of us will experience a mental illness, but each of us will at some point face challenges when it comes to our mental health, just like we do with our physical health from time to time.
We'd like to take this opportunity to highlight a few organisations and charities in our blog that are doing fantastic work and can provide expert information, support and advice for anyone wanting to find out more:
Mind
Mind have a selection of resources and guidance available for anyone who is struggling with their mental health due to lockdown, isolation and the pandemic as a whole - click here
Be There is a Canadian based mental health organisation, they have some amazing resources to help you know how to be there for others. Their golden rules are a great way to understand how you can best support a loved one struggling with their mental health. They also have a section dedicated to being there for yourself.
7 Cups is an online support service that provides caring listeners with free emotional support. They have self-help guides to look through and a free 24/7 chat service with volunteer listeners. They have facilitated over 40,000,000 conversations about mental health and have helped over 25 million people.
Endorsed by the Samaritans and 25 other national mental health support organisations and trusts, The Hub of Hope is the world’s first of its kind mental health database bringing grassroots and national mental health services together in one place for the first time ever. Using the location of web browsers or mobile devices, the cloud-based web application allows anyone, anywhere to find the nearest source of support for any mental health issue, from depression and anxiety to PTSD, as well as providing a ‘talk now’ button connecting users directly to the Samaritans.
Please feel free to forward this mailer to a friend or partner who may benefit.
A social enterprise dedicated to helping youth affected by depression. They believe that mental health is just as important as physical health and they challenge the stigma and judgement that can come with mental health that prevents people reaching out for help.
Please feel free to forward this page to a friend or partner who may benefit.
Till next time,
Lea Anna x
(first fiddle) @ Common Sense London