Mental Health Aberdeen, a local charity who provide counselling and information services to children and adults of all ages who are experiencing mental health issues, has launched a new initiative to coincide with World Mental Health Day on Wednesday, October 10.
The charity, which has close to 40 members of staff and over 80 volunteers has been offering a range of free counselling and information services to the people of Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire for nearly 70 years. The provision of these services relies heavily on donations and fundraising activity, and whilst raising money has been increasingly difficult across the past four years in Aberdeen due to the struggling economy, the need for their services has continued to increase, with the 2017 annual report showing that over 5,000 adult appointments took place, and the team took over 7,000 calls for information. With regards to the counselling services for young people, there were again over 5,000 appointments, which is a 42.7% increase on the previous year.
To ensure that these services can continue to be offered free of charge, Mental Health Aberdeen has launched a new campaign, Time to Talk, which both reminds people of the importance of talking about their mental health, and for the first time, gives the public the opportunity to sponsor minutes of counselling time by making a donation to the charity. For every £10 donated to Mental Health Aberdeen, 15 minutes of counselling time can be provided by one of their trained (COSCA Certified) counsellors. A donation of £40 will provide one full counselling session.
Astrid Whyte, CEO of Mental Health Aberdeen said “Whilst it is extremely positive that mental health is now being discussed regularly in the wider media, there is still a great deal of work to be done to ensure that people feel comfortable talking about their mental health, and feel able to ask for support when they need it. In 2017, our team spent the equivalent of 3,000 working days counselling those in need, and yet we still had a waiting list. Whilst we continuously run our own in-house counsellor training sessions for our wonderful volunteers, the number of people contacting us continues to grow, and we want to ensure that every person who calls us receives the support that they need.”
“We simply could not run our services without the incredible generosity of funders, both private and public, and our hope is that Time to Talk will help us to raise awareness of Mental Health Aberdeen amongst the people of the North-east. As a result, we hope to build on the incredible kindness and support that we already receive, ensuring that we can continue to offer all of our services, decrease the waiting times for each service, and ultimately increase the number of people that our counsellors can help.”
For more details of how you can support Mental Health Aberdeen with the Time to Talk campaign, or for the counselling and information services that are available to children and adults across the North-east, visit www.mha.uk.net.