New project encourages people with mental health difficulties to blog their everyday lives

A new project funded by Public Health England, invites people living with mental health difficulties, to blog about their daily experiences.

'A Day in the Life' asks that people write blog posts to give others an insight into their daily lives through blog posts.

Anyone who signs up to ‘A Day in the Life’ is able to write about their daily experiences and give others a view into what makes their mental well-being worse and what improves it.

Director of development at Social Spider and creator of ‘A Day in the Life’ Mark Brown said: “A Day in the Life’ offer us a great opportunity to capture a snapshot of what living every day with a mental health difficulty means for people. Volunteers offering to blog will be asked a simple question, ‘what made your day better and what made your day worse?’”

Social Spider is a social enterprise company based in London, publishing research and offering national and local projects coinciding with mental health awareness. Mr Brown was recognised as one of Nursing Times and Health Service Journal’s Social Media Pioneers of 2014 as well as being noticed for his work in mental health in the 2014 Independent on Sunday Happy List.

He continued: “The internet has made it possible for more people with mental health difficulties than ever before to share their experiences, both good and bad. ‘A Day in the Life’ will bring these experiences together in a way that will enrich the conversations about mental health that we all have, whether as policy makers or members of the public.”

‘A Day in the Life’ allows users to write a 700 word blog post as a part of a year-long project. Users of the site will be able to write posts on set days, the first posts can be made from 7 November 2014.

The site will allow further posts to be added on set dates in Winter 2014, Spring 2015 and Summer 2015.

The director of health and well-being for Public Health England, Professor Kevin Fenton, said: “Public Health England want to see this unique and important project succeed, and provide us with invaluable insight into the lives of people living with a mental health difficulty.

“People signing up will know that their contributions will help health professionals, policy makers and commissioners to understand what helps, and what needs to be improved. I urge people to get involved and share their experiences.”

Public Health England work to prevent disparities within public health care as well as to safeguard the health and well-being of people living within England.

The blog has been created to provide information and increase awareness of mental health difficulties as well as aid the creation and amendment of current policies to be better suited to people’s needs.

All posts created on ‘A Day in the Life’ will become fully searchable by topic, theme and whether the content had a negative or positive impact on the user. By creating groups within the blog, reports can be created as well exploring some of the results further to achieve a better understanding of mental health difficulties.

For more information visit: https://dayinthelifemh.org.uk