Welcome to a caringmindblog written by a former carer Matthew Mckenzie in South London. As of this blog’s writing it is Mental Health Awareness Week which is Hosted by the Mental Health Foundation. Mental Health Awareness Week takes place from 18-24 May 2020 and the theme this year is kindness.
The Mental Health Foundation is a charity that works to prevent and raise awareness of mental health problems.
Are you an unpaid caregiver for someone with #MultipleSclerosis, #dementia, #cancer or #mentalhealth condition?
Researchers at Kings College London are recruiting UK participants aged 18+ for a 35 – 40 min online survey to better understand resilience and distress during COVID-19 pandemic.
‘Why’ By Elsie Cronin
Why don’t you see a Mum doing her best?
You see it differently from the rest
From your madness I take the flak
And patiently wait for you to come back
The worry you cause, the tears I cry
Just to end up asking why?
Why is it so wrong for me to care?
What is it you don’t want to share?
Be careful how you play this out
Madness or not I will shout
I have got your best interests at heart
So come on – make a start
Start to accept with grace
The love and care that I give without a trace
A trace of tiredness and frustration at your place……….
In the mental health rat race
When you come around, as you will
You may well find I’ve swallowed “the pill”
The “pill” of rejection that I receive
Each time you give it there is no reprieve
No reprieve
And so I grieve
Oh well hopefully you will reflect
On the one who sees a speck
A speck of you from long ago
That keeps on making me want to show
Show that I love you without conditions
With all my heart and soul
To you I pledge this rendition
Blodwen Jones has released a poem which you can listen to at the link below. She is working on a new book. You can find more of her works in her book Moonstruck, which can be bought on Amazon.
Latest Poem by Blodwen E Jones
Welcome to the April update of the Lewisham Mental Health carers forum. This is one of the several forums that I run in the community aimed at carers who look after someone with a mental illness. The forum is not a support group since it focuses on carers engaging with health and social care services. I feel there is a lack of carer led forums where carers can come together and seek engagement, information, co-production and querying of health services.
Welcome to the April update of the Southwark Mental Health Carers forum. Just a short intro about the forum. The forum is aimed at carers who care for someone with a mental illness. I obviously try to aim the forum at carers based in Southwark, but we often ask for engagement with MH, health services, commissioners and social services.
All my carer forums including carer peer support groups are run via Zoom due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Welcome to the April update of the Lewisham BAME Mental Health Carers forum. This is one of the four forums that I chair in South London. Out of the four forums, this group focuses on BAME carer developments in Health and social care. The group has been going since 3 years or so. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, I am running all forums via my own ZOOM account.
The invited speakers for April was Shilpa Ross who is a senior researcher at the Kings Fund policy team that works on a range of health and social care research programmes. Shilpa was invited to the forum to speak about her latest research that not enough progress has been made to address discrimination against black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) staff in the NHS.
Welcome to a quick update from the Southwark Mental Health carers forum. I know I have not been blogging for around a month, but I have recently suffered a bereavement. It has taken a fair bit of energy to do much, but I am quite proud to be able to continue to run the forums even though I have to take time and look after myself.
Given the time I will eventually write more about the current situation, but for now I want to at least update carer members. On the February update of the MH carers forum for Southwark, we are able to get support and engaged with King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Guys and St Thomas NHS Trust and South London & Maudsley. For February King’s college hospital Mental Health Lead kindly attended the forum to speak to carers about Kings Mental Health strategy, which is still going through development.
Thanks for dropping by my carers blog post. This site raises awareness of unpaid carers and mental health. As of this blog post I am caring for someone close and just coping the best I can, while keeping a close eye on events. As of the title, this blog post is about the Corona virus and its implication to carers like myself and those in the community.
If you have been following my tweets on twitter, I have been posting that carers need to take care of themselves. Sometimes I have done a blog post about carer wellbeing and sometimes I will do a video blog or podcast.
Welcome to the February update of the Lewisham BAME Mental Health carers forum. The forum is aimed at black Afo-Caribbean, Asian and other minorities carers in the borough of Lewisham, however I am happy for other carers in surrounding boroughs to attend. The forum is run from Bromley, Lewisham and Greenwich Mind centre under the arm of Community Wellbeing.
The forum is more educational and allows carers to discuss with mental health service providers any queries about services. A high majority of the BAME community use mental health services and some of the issues are specific regarding race, culture and even language. The issues are complex and deep, but discussions, forming relationships, education and working together is the way forward.
A Caring Mind 