Mental Health Awareness Week 13th - 19th May

This year, Mental Health Awareness Week focused on Body Image. Body image can affect any one of us at any age. The Mental Health Foundation last year found that 30% of all adults have felt so stressed by body image and appearance that they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope. That’s almost 1 in every 3 people.

Mind charity state that 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year, and in England 1 in 6 people report experiencing a common mental health problem (such as anxiety and depression) in any given week. This is something that needs to talked about and not to be ignored.

Over Mental Health Awareness Week, we asked our team how they cope when they’re feeling down and their emotions are taking over. Special thanks to our team members John, Lily, Bex and Missy for opening up and talking to us and you, our followers. You can watch the full video on our IGTV here >>>

John: “Morning! I’m John and I’m the commercial manager here at ATIKA. Leanne’s asked me what I do when I feel a little bit down. To be honest with you, I think when I do feel down It’s because I’m feeling things are a bit out of control, modern city and all that and what I do is I exercise. I ride my bike and I ride it everywhere I can! To be honest with you, the sadder I feel the harder I exercise. It seems to work for me and gives me something I’m fully in control of and that I can achieve and that’s a nice feeling.”

Lily: “So the first thing I do is I watch a TV show, I watch The Office and I just sit in my room and eat some food. On a more deeper level though, when I am feeling down I will try to think about the fact that that the pressure I put on myself is not a pressure that has come from me. It’s come from another bigger authority and I don’t like to be suppressed by that. When I think about that I feel weak, so I try to come back stronger and be stronger than that and just feel free in myself.”

Bex: “Hiya I’m Bex, I’m the content and marketing manager for ATIKA. I’m just going to talk a little bit about mental health and how I deal with it. If my brain is feeling particularly messy, or foggy or if I’m doubting my appearance, or getting older or work, or whatever it is, I find going to a really calm space like a gallery and interacting with art really helps. It takes some power away from them emotions and puts it into something else. I did a little blogpost about the recent Chloe Wise exhibition so go check it out, the link is in our story!”

Missy: “So when I’m feeling a bit down or stressed, what I tend to do is just channel all my energy into my business. So when I was going through a tough time I did a ‘Self Care’ season collection with my brand called @designsbymisemi. That was just me sharing self care tips with other people as well as me trying to dig myself out of a really bad time. I was trying to be  bit more selfish and take care of myself. I think sometimes when things do get too much, and you can’t do it all yourself, you have to just get help so for me it was talking to my friends and explaining to them I was going through a tough time and then getting therapy. Therapy has really helped me a lot because it kind of helps you to focus on your triggers and know what triggers you into feeling low, depressed or anxious and trying to find healthy ways to cope with that. For me, I realised that when I spend more time with friends and family, I tend to feel a bit more relieved when I am around loved ones. That for me was a big thing that I tried to make more time to do. Also, trying to put more time into my brand MISEMI, and when I channel good energy, I feel like good things happen. It’s like a big way for me to deal with my anxiety and sometimes I just completely shut off social media and take a break. It’s a big deal, even if It’s just 2 hours a day, I tend to stop scrolling now. I’m trying to put in things that make me feel a bit happier, so I’m trying to read a little bit more. 10 minutes before bed I read. So yeah, It’s just little things.”

We also got to work with George David Hodgson, Mental Health Advocate and owner of Maison de Choup. We invited George in for our next part in our series of ‘Conversations by ATIKA’. In this episode, we talked specifically about Men’s Mental Health.

Blogpost, video and podcast coming soon.