“Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise.”
Horace
I can’t believe Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) 2025 is finally here! It feels like forever ago that I was looking at an Awareness Dates website (this one!), saw MHAW was in the next few weeks, and made the on-the-spot decision to create content for it. As you will know if you’ve seen the Content Agenda graphic on my social media (and at the end of this post), a lot of the other pieces are in collaboration with organisations and another blogger, so I decided to use today’s content, to chat through my decision to do MHAW, my ideas for the actual content I’ve put together, and some advice on coping with the things you may find yourself reading about throughout MHAW…
The Decision To Create
After being reminded – by chance – of just how imminent MHAW was, I asked myself two questions in order to make the decision as to whether to commit to creating content for the occasion:
1. Do I have any immediate content ideas?
2. Is there enough time to create them?
These are actually the two questions which I tend to use to make the same decision about different awareness dates too. They’re obviously incredibly short and easy to answer so it makes the decision process fairly quick – which is always preferable in content creation! I think one of the most annoying stages in creating content can be when you find you’re taking so long to decide whether to go ahead with it or not that if you’d just decided straight-away, you might have actually been finished by now! That can be a frustrating situation!
Another frustrating one – which has come up with MHAW this year – is that I did actually feel like from the beginning of planning the content, I had ample time to put everything together, and then all of a sudden it felt like I’d barely done anything, and the awareness date was suddenly looming! It had me questioning what the heck I had done with all that time! I felt a bit regretful – an emotion and thought process I always avoid because I’m one of those people who feel that life is too short to have any regrets from it. I recognise that actually, regrets can either be completely soul-destroying or positive and productive! And having that potential for a totally opposite impact on your mental health, is a huge reason why I like to be sensible, careful, and mindful around the topic in general.
Looking back at where the time went from feeling there was an abundance of it to panicking(!), I think that the area of this year’s MHAW content creation that took the most time, was actually the communication side of it in terms of the contact with the partners for each of the collaboration pieces (CNTW, Cats Protection, Waythrough and Gum On My Shoe). Now, to be completely fair and transparent; Cats Protection and Gum On My Shoe were by far the easiest and quickest in terms of responses and arranging meetings. But Waythrough and CNTW are most-definitely larger organisations and the staff I worked with for each, have far more demanding calendars! Particularly because for both organisations, I actually had to be in touch with multiple members of their staff rather than the one main contact person (as I did for Cats Protection and obviously in working with Martin) for the collaborations, so that made it harder in trying to find mutually agreeable dates/times for everyone involved.
In all honesty, throughout the content creation process for this year’s MHAW, I did have a couple of instances where I thought ‘what am I doing?!’ and began questioning and doubting my ability to get the content finished – at a quality that I was content with – on time. And I think some people might be surprised by that purely because in January, I’ll have been blogging thirteen years(!) and so, I’d agree it’s completely understandable to think that I’d be like, 100% adjusted and accustomed and confident in this industry by now. But I’m not. And it’s not just an ‘Aimee’ thing – there are so many other Bloggers or online Influencers who still struggle with their confidence in their abilities – particularly around content creation – despite being in their career industry for years.
Ideas & Inspiration
1. What’s my first thought from the chosen theme?
2. Do I have enough thoughts and experiences for an original piece?
3. Who have I not collaborated with for a while?
4. Is the idea creative enough?
5. Have I got enough time to create this?
They were five of the main questions which were really key to the ideas and inspiration stage of my content creation for MHAW this year.
From when I first created, I’m NOT Disordered in 2013, until probably around two or three years ago, I would say that the largest action for this stage of content creation, revolved around actually seeking resources for ideas and inspiration. And so, when I’ve been writing about the stage, I’ve typically listed places or ways to get find ideas for online content e.g. looking to music for inspiration or doing particular searches of important keywords on Pinterest. But I think that this – content creation – is one area of blogging where my years upon years of career experience has actually had an impact(!) and it’s done so by somewhat streamlining my process of it because this is an exercise I now very rarely need to do.
How To Cope With Reading/Seeing Mental Health Content
ü Try to read or look at, at least one light-hearted piece of content that is not mental health themed per day.
ü Don’t read potentially triggering content around areas like rape, abuse, suicide, and self-harm when you’re alone.
ü Have something nice and fun to do after you’ve finished looking at MHAW content e.g. see a friend, get a takeaway, spend time with a pet etc.
ü Use grounding or calming/breathing exercises from the skills in the Mindfulness module of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) or self-soothing and distracting activities from the Distress Tolerance module!
Additional tips in another post from 2022:
HOW TO COPE WITH EVERYTHING YOU SEE ONLINE | I'm NOT Disordered
This Year’s MHAW
Waythrough: I decided to collaborate with Waythrough who is the new organisation which supply my Support Workers after they (Richmond Fellowship) merged with Humankind because – having only launched in October 2024 (you can read our collaboration from then, here and my speech at one of their launch events, is here) – means this is actually their first MHAW as Waythrough! So, I was really eager to be a part of that memory.
Instagram: @waythrough_UK
Twitter: @waythrough_UK
Facebook: WaythroughUK
Website: www.waythrough.org.uk
Cats Protection: I first collaborated with my local Cats Protection Adoption Centre (Tyneside) in December 2018 and since then, we’ve actually teamed up on, now, twenty occasions (with our most recent being this one around their Winter Campaign in December 2024). Aside from obviously my love for cats, they’re one of my favourite collaboration partner because their name and work really helps contribute a more creative and one-of-a-kind feature to my content.
Cats Protection | UK’s Largest Cat Welfare Charity
CNTW: I guess that I must just feel like I actually do a lot more work with this Trust than I really do(!) because according to my blog’s archive search, our last collaboration seems to have been MHAW in 2023 (where I found this post we’d created together). Perhaps it’s just because I’m generally in touch with them anyway since I’m still on caseload with my local Community Mental Health Team (CMHT)! So, realising it has actually been a little while, I wanted to collaborate on something more up to date.
Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (cntw.nhs.uk)
CNTWNHS (@cntw.nhs) • Instagram photos and videos
Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (facebook.com)
Gum On My Shoe: Marty and I had actually been discussing a collaboration soon any way and the questions had been underway before we made the decision to feature our answers as content to MHAW.
http://www.facebook.com/GumOnMyShoe
https://twitter.com/GumOnMyShoeBook
https://instagram.com/marty_at_gumonmyshoe
Favourite Previous MHAW Content on I’m NOT Disordered
2016
Mental Health Awareness Week: Top Relationships for John Lawlor | I'm NOT Disordered
2017
POST SIX: MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2017 | I'm NOT Disordered
2018
2020
MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2020 POST SEVEN | A ROUND-UP OF MHAW & A VLOG | I'm NOT Disordered
2022
2023