This year’s Guardian and Observer Christmas charity appeal theme is one of our most common and under-acknowledged health issues: mental illness.
One in four of us will experience mental ill health at some point in our lives. For most it will be a mix of anxiety and depression; for a small number, it will be a more critical illness, such as schizophrenia.
It can affect anyone, from MPs and business executives to top sportspeople, from teenagers to new parents, prisoners to pensioners. It is, ultimately, the most ordinary of conditions. Many of us will know someone who has been mentally ill: family members, friends, work colleagues.
Despite its prevalence, mental illness carries a taboo. We find it hard to talk about: unlike physical illness, it carries stigma and shame. Yet as the Time to Change campaign says: “The effects are as real as a broken arm, even though there isn’t a sling or plaster cast to show for it.”
Our Christmas appeal will raise money for nine superb UK-based charities. Each offers innovative services in their particular areas of expertise, but all have a common mission, which is one we as a media organisation share: to challenge stigma and create more positive societal attitudes towards mental illness.
Combating the deep-seated myths and stereotyping around people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and personality disorder is the aim of Rethink Mental Illness, which also does brilliant work in advocacy, advice and carer support. Myriad local and national Mind charity projects remind us that the people who know best about mental health services are the people that use them, and that often the wisest sources of advice – from staying well, to navigating the NHS, or the social security benefits system – are people who have been mentally ill themselves.
Star Wards charity enthusiastically uses patient insights to improve the practice and quality of inpatient mental healthcare and create a more empathetic and therapeutic space on hospital wards. Its work is serious, yet never loses sight of the importance of fun, food and animals, amongst other things, in the delivery of good acute care.
A third of all young people who get into trouble with the law have an unmet mental health need. MAC-UK is an award-winning charity working with teenagers involved with gangs. It takes health services to the streets of some of the UK’s most deprived areas, to reach the children who are most in need of support but least likely to get it.
Caring for people with a mental illness and dealing with the emotional consequences is an exacting task – especially if the carer is a child looking after a parent or sibling. Kidstime Foundation has designed innovative and successful ways of supporting young carers who, without this help, are at higher risk of developing problems of their own, from poor school attendance to depression.
Gardening Leave uses horticultural therapy to help ex-service personnel cope with the aftershock of armed combat. The charity’s stunning gardens are a place of safety and serenity for veterans with post-traumatic stress who, through planting, digging, and weeding, can heal and make the transition to civilian life.
Simply being there, round the clock, every day of the year, for people who are stressed, depressed or even suicidal, is the proud mission of Samaritans. Its volunteers offer time, space and privacy for people to talk about what’s on their minds – at the end of a phone, or face to face in the community: in colleges, hospitals and railway stations.
The Centre for Mental Health is a research and development “incubator”, linking the worlds of policy and frontline service provision. Its influential work has practical aims, from working with employers to helping mentally ill people get and stay in work, and improving the range and quality of prison health services.
Cooltan Arts uses art, film and culture to inspire and transform the lives of people with mental distress, via cultural walks, podcasts, exhibitions and poetry. Its work is shaped by the persuasive belief that mental wellbeing is enhanced by the power of creativity.
Austerity and cuts have not been kind to mental health services, or the people who rely on them. Our appeal is a recognition of the importance of this vital area of health and social services, and a tribute to the innovative contribution of the voluntary sector.
Last year Guardian and Observer readers helped raise more than £340,000 for charities developing affordable technology in Africa. We thank you again for your incredible generosity. Over the next few weeks our journalists will demonstrate – through words, film, pictures and data, online on our Christmas appeal blog, and via our two papers – the brilliant work of our appeal charities. We hope we can inspire you to give generously.
