We are delivering awareness raising sessions with women experiencing poor mental health. The 12 sessions include awareness raising, empowerment, developing resiliency skills such as problem solving, and creative ways to challenge stigma and discrimination. 

The sessions aim to allow the women to express themselves, focus on positive life experiences, enhance their self-worth, reduce stress, build resilience, and enable them to develop a greater sense of personal achievement and a way to make sense of the world.

Sessions will include communication skills, non-judgmental approaches, dealing with difficulties, problem solving, understanding mental health and well-being.

There are four parts to the project:

Part 1: Awareness of mental health sessions - including women sharing their experiences and information sharing about mental health and well-being. Sessions will challenge the myths surrounding poor mental health, use practical skills development and encouraging the use of food and exercise as tools to improve mental health. It will also include information on support services available to women in the community and how to access them. 

Part 2: Using Visual Art Sessions - workshops to empower women to use visual arts to enable them to share their experiences and identify opportunities to make positive change. The women will be supported make short videos as part of workshops – making a personal statement of around 20 seconds – committing themselves to challenging stigma and shame associated with poor mental health and the damage it causes. We will ask permission to post videos on our social media and encourage them to do so and share widely. Women choosing not to be part of the video will take photographs and link it to strong messages which we will display on a canvas.  Artwork will be posted on social media and exhibited through different projects. We will work with local partner organisations to get the message to the wider community. 

Part 3: Evaluation - each session will be evaluated by participants. In addition to this, each participant will complete a WEMWBS (Warwick and Edinburgh Mental Well Being Scale) at the start of the project and again at the end.

Part 4: Evaluation Report & Resource Sharing - Following the sessions, an evaluation report and sharing resources will be produced. The former will include recommendations for continuing and improving this work. The latter will be shared as widely as possible to help more women improve their mental health through better awareness, healthy eating, exercising and getting peer support.