As part of SIO’s mission to challenge mental health stigma and discrimination, we have been doing roadshows in different settings.
Our roadshows have been held at New College Durham, Durham Sixth Form and East Durham College. This is where we had a display board, resources and leaflets for young people to come up and seek more information. There were lots of engagement and a common conversation starter was the jar of stigmatising words.
Kelly Park
Anti-Stigma Ambassadors at Kelly Park Limited hosted a #Pride coffee morning supported by Stamp It Out message.
Manager, Kelly Armstrong, said:
"We hosted an event to promote LGBTQIA+ within the business to let out staff know we are here to support them and not discriminate.
We wanted staff to feel that there is no stigma attached to their life choices we want staff to feel supported and confident that they can talk to us."
Our resources have added a lot of fun to the activities, encouraged reflection, conversations and gave people an opportunity to find out more about what we do.
Homegroup
We believe that together we can make a change. The more people join us as Anti-Stigma Ambassadors the more support we can provide. Our mission is to reach as far possible, spread the word and challenge mental health stigma and discrimination.
Our partnership with Homegroup gave us an opportunity to attend some community wellbeing services where we could meet the participants, talk about Stamp It Out (SIO) activities, our training offers, have conversations about mental health and share some useful resources.
It's not easy to open about mental health. It was apparent that there is a lot of self-stigma and hesitance to reach for help which proves how important the topic is and how much there is still to do.
It was great to see an interest and expand our Anti-Stigma Ambassadors team. A couple of people were excited to join us and use their lived experience to bring about behaviour change. Despite the difficult subject we can still share positive moments and work towards a better world.
We are hoping to continue to do our work with these colleges and expand to other colleges in County Durham - please get in touch if you would like to know more!