I think every #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek the gulf between people just coming to terms with the reality of difficulties with their mental health and people who have lived with that knowledge for years is huge. What is a profound revelation for one is an oft-heard truism for other

Last decade of mental health awareness has been focused on telling people new to thinking about mental ill-health what things might be like for people who live with it. There's always a new audience, but each year more people have heard the news #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek

That's the thing about 'social movements'. They keep going until they either stop or the message of the movement passes into common currency. There's always going to be people for whom this is year zero of life with or around mental ill-health #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek

Belief has been awareness is the touchpaper of change, so necessarily will be out of step with what people really need to happen. Get people interested, then the real work will begin. Professionalising 'awareness' can mean this gets stuck at year one #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek

I think it's possible to make strong case that the idea that mental ill-health is a thing and it needs sorting out has passed into common currency. What's missing is the bridge between that and large scale change beyond 'attitudes' and personal actions #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek

I started doing mental health stuff in about 2006. I've written about this stuff every year. I think we're at point where concrete demands on society can be made as concrete demands, not appeals to change of attitudes. But awareness stuff still needed #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek

Each year more people declare how fed up they are with #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek and make clear what they feel needs to happen. This is good. But the discussion of the change needed involves fewer people than the action to 'promote' mental health messages. there's yer gap

Too much awareness stuff on mental health during #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek tries to skip discussion and debate needed about what people need and just tries to deliver an answer. This is comforting for people fresh to subject, but empty for people who lived through it for yonks

It's easy for those of us who have lived mental ill-health and trauma for years to forget how much of a revelation something like 'it's ok not to be ok' was when we first found ourselves at odds with ourselves or struggling. But that effect wears off #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek

Ultimately, the challenge for any of us is what to do when all of the easy stuff people suggest has been tried by us or our community and it hasn't worked. The people it does work for don't join 'the mental health world', they leave that behind #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek

If going for a walk or joining a choir or getting better work life balance works for someone: mint. It's when it doesn't that you end up fifteen years of awareness in and still not getting what you need. And hearing the simpler stuff again. And again #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek

I think I said in an interview a couple of years ago that 'it's cliched to be cynical at Christmas' when it comes to awareness days or weeks. It's always someone's first #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek where it really means something to them. I don't want to be the Ancient Mariner...

... Boney finger pointing at the wedding. Nor do I want to have to prove that, yes, I do understand the issues. I think #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek needs fundamental rethink and reset and a recentring on everyone left behind by change not happening. A space for complexity, memory