Over a year ago, I posted on an internal blog at work how
wonderful my team and others I worked with were.
It was at the time when I was often distracted, at least in
part, with caring for one of my children who was suffering suicidal thoughts, serious
anxiety, depression, self-harming, selective mutism, etc.
And the people i worked with - made my life so much easier!
I felt writing it would help me, as I cope with the day to
day stresses.
I know a lot of people who use “journaling” to help their thought
process.
Just the act of writing it down helped.
Little did I know that it was a start of a massive change in my company.
Two days later, I received a phone call from somebody (a total
stranger) who explained that recently he had gone thru massive personal tragedy,
and was suicidal. He went on to explain that it was his Line Manager who pulled
him through & saved his life. He had
recently had an article published in a news magazine, entitled, “Saved from
Suicide”.
After a few more minutes in discussion, we thought … wouldn’t
it be good if we have a company-wide Mental Health support network.
After a few calls, we had a team and drew up plans.
Everybody we spoke to thought the idea was great.
To cut a very long story short. we teamed up with another group
of people who had a similar idea (and piloted a scheme a year earlier) and set
up the Peer to Peer Support Network.
The Network, simply provides a list of folks who have been
trained, vetted and available to take phone calls/emails from people who need a
bit of support. The list is filterable by location or mental health experience
- so people can find somebody local to them (or at the other end of the
country) who has lived through depression, PTSD, menopause, OCD etc.
Lots of coffee is involved!
