AN INSIDE LOOK AT CREATING A MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY FOR AN NHS TRUST | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | WORLD HEALTH DAY 2024

“The individual who says it is not possible should move out of the way of those doing it.”

Tricia Cunningham

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Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (newcastle-hospitals.nhs.uk)

Having been a blogger for over eleven years now, there have honestly been so many instances where I’ve found myself genuinely shocked and pleasantly surprised. These have varied from reaching reader milestones to being gifted items or complimentary experiences to being asked to give speeches at events. Also, in that list of shocking things has been landing collaborations with huge organisations such as Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NUTH)! Prior to the opportunity came up to help create and develop the Trust’s new Mental Health Strategy, it had honestly always – literally since Day One of my blogging career! – been a goal of mine to work with NUTH! I was surprised again when, after hearing about I’m NOT Disordered, the Trust asked me to also write some blog posts. So, as the Strategy is finalised this month – and because of it being World Health Day and the theme this year is ‘My Health, My Right’ – it was almost natural and automatic to write a blog post with some of the feedback NUTH’s Patient Experience team asked me and my fellow members of the Strategy’s Expert Reference Group to provide…

THE RED FLAGS IN COMMUNICATION AROUND MENTAL HEALTH | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | TIME TO TALK DAY 2024

This post is in collaboration with the Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NUTH) who I’m helping and supporting in their creation of a Trust-wide Mental Health Strategy (which I’ve previously blogged about here, here, here, here, and here). Together, we’re marking Time To Talk Day 2024 which is a date where everyone is encouraged to talk more about mental health in the hope that it will tackle the discrimination and stigma held against the topic and that, in doing so, it will also improve the help and support that is offered or available for those who might be struggling with their mental health. We’ve decided to utilise the fact that whilst there is – rightly – so much content around encouraging conversations, there are too few pieces around the importance of recognising when a communication around mental health needs to be reconsidered whether by terminating it completely or changing the route it seems to be taking – something which is as equally important as starting a chat. Thankfully and admirably, it’s also something NUTH recognises to be an essential component to their upcoming Mental Health Strategy…

WHY HOSPITAL CAN BE STRESSFUL & HOW TO GET THROUGH IT | NATIONAL STRESS AWARENESS DAY 2023 | IN COLLABORATION WITH THE NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

 

To mark Stress Awareness Day 2023, I’ve teamed up with The Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NUTH) to talk to you about how their upcoming Mental Health Strategy can help to tackle why it can be so stressful to visit or be admitted to hospital. I’ll also be providing some tips and advice for both those struggling with anxiety in this way and those staff who are caring, helping, and supporting these people…

How Do You Define Stress If It’s Different for Everyone?

WHY NHS TRUSTS NEED TO BE FOLLOWING IN NEWCASTLE’S FOOTSTEPS!! | IN COLLABORATION WITH THE NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

Our first collaboration: FROM INTENSIVE CARE TO COLLABORATIONS | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST TO MARK THEIR BRAND-NEW MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk)

Our second collaboration: EVERYTHING I’M LEARNING FROM MY WORK WITH NEWCASTLE HOSPITALS ON THEIR MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | I'm NOT Disordered (imnotdisordered.co.uk)

So, I’ve been working with the Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NUTH) for over a year (you can read all of our previous collaboration posts above) on their upcoming Mental Health Strategy and spending so long on this project, has really opened my eyes to so much that I thought I might confront, and so much that I hadn’t even imagined would come up from doing this! The main experience and huge benefit from this project, for me though, has been the recognition that in working together, so many thoughts and feelings I’d held against the Trust for saving my life when I made a suicide attempt were completely changed; and for so many different reasons…

Going through abuse can really leave you quite vulnerable in so many ways, but particularly when it comes to your thoughts, feelings, and opinions on hatred and resentment, and this can go on to affect so many instances and relationships in your future… So, for me – in the beginning – I held a lot of anger and hatred towards my abuser and was 100% confident of both the fact that he was worthy of it and that it was completely fine for me to feel this way. I didn’t foresee anything bad arising from it. If anything, to be honest, I thought it was a good thing – a healthy thing. I thought that anyone and everyone would be full of this amount of anger and spite if they had gone through what I had.

EVERYTHING I’M LEARNING FROM MY WORK WITH NEWCASTLE HOSPITALS ON THEIR MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

Since the Involvement Bank of Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW) advertised the opportunity on behalf of Newcastle Hospitals for its members to become involved in the development of their mental health strategy, I’ve been working alongside some of the most amazing NHS staff I have ever come across (namely Gemma and Fardeen)! And having created a post a while ago about my journey with the Trust (which you can read here), I thought I’d follow it up with this chat about everything I’m learning on this productive and inspirational journey to create a mental health strategy that genuinely has the Trust’s patients at the very heart of it…

If you’ve been reading, I’m NOT Disordered for a little while then you’ll probably know – or have noticed – that I’m very fond of creating collaborations with various organisations, charities, companies, and brands. My passion for this kind of content mostly stems from both the incredible opportunities or gifted experiences/products I’m offered, and from the idea that my blog is of a standing in the industry where being mentioned or featured on it, can be beneficial – in so many ways – for others. I feel that this says a lot about the standard of my posts, the popularity of my blog, and its examples and illustrations of the various definitions of the term ‘successful.’

FROM INTENSIVE CARE TO COLLABORATIONS | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST TO MARK THEIR BRAND-NEW MENTAL HEALTH STRATEGY

“To me, the model of success is not linear. Success is completing the full circle of yourself”

Gloria Steinem

All the way back in April last year, I received an email from Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne, and Wear NHS Foundation Trust’s (CNTW’s) Involvement Bank with a request for those on the Bank (service users, ex-service users, and carers) to help Newcastle Hospitals with the creation and development of their new Mental Health Strategy. Having had a number of experiences with one of the Trust’s sites (the Royal Victoria Infirmary aka the RVI) from a patient point of view; I applied to be part of the project…

The attraction for me to this opportunity was mostly centred around my previous, mental health related patient experiences with the Trust. Well, one experience in particular…