If there was ever a profoundly inspirational person to know, its local Mental Health Awareness campaigner Ben Salmon. His brain child ‘Let’s be Open About Mental Health to Break the Stigma’ campaign was created to help start conversations about mental health, raise awareness and to show how the stigma surrounding mental health impacts on those experiencing mental health difficulties. The campaign gives people the opportunity to write their thoughts in a message to help break the stigma and tackle common misconceptions about mental health.
As a person extremely passionate about mental health awareness, to find myself giving a talk with Ben at an Elft (Local NHS Division) staff induction day last week was rather exciting for me. As we sat side by side and told our harrowing stories to the 47 attendees and shared our thoughts on how to improve mental health care, I realised what we wanted to achieve was the same – to encourage more kindness and compassion in mental health units, to treat service users with the care and respect they would like to be treated with and, above all, the importance of talking openly about mental health to promote awareness and break down stigma.
A service user himself, with a long history of mental health illness, Ben is humble and unassuming but with obvious warmth and passion for what he is doing. He has made such a success of it that 7 months ago the NHS asked him if he would like to work for them full time running the campaign. Of course he accepted! What an amazing turn of events this turned out to be both for Ben and for the world of mental health that was crying out for something like this. So, in the past 7 months, with strong support from Elft, Bens’ campaign has gone from strength to strength and achieved incredible things.
Ben took a simple idea and developed it into an excellent mental health awareness tool and a safe platform for people to discuss mental health.
The idea was born around 15 months ago and encourages people to be open and share their mental health and wellbeing experiences by writing their message on the ‘Break the Stigma’ board. Ben then photographs them holding the board and posts the picture on the campaigns Facebook page.
Back in June Ben created a feature on the campaign for the mental health inpatient units in Luton and Bedford and they still all sit proudly upon the walls. Each feature has a giant poster with a collage of the photos Ben has taken with messages from service users and staff.
Over the last year people from all sorts of backgrounds have been photographed holding the board with their message on – service users, NHS staff, policemen and women, local rugby teams, MP’s, friends and members of the public. Ben has taken his campaign to Bedford River Festival, Bedfordshire Police Family Fun Day, Luton Mela, Mind in Luton and Ampthill, various support groups and a weekly Wellness Hub in Bedford. He also gives talks on his own experiences and how/where people can get help with their own mental health problems if they need to. He is an amazing character and someone I admire and aspire to be like.
I think Ben is a Superhero and is saving the World one message at a time. I am proud to know him and to be part of his fantastic campaign, something that I strongly believe will go down in history as a major game changer within the NHS and beyond. Let’s continue to create awareness of mental health issues and kick stigmas butt!
*Please visit the Facebook page for the campaign for more information – ‘Let’s Be Open About Mental Health’. I really don’t feel like I can give Ben the credit he deserves in this article alone and the Facebook page will give you more insight into what he is achieving. If you want to take part in helping to ‘Break the Stigma’ please contact Ben on ben.salmons@elft.nhs.uk or via the message tool on the Facebook page.