Those of you that know me will know that I’ve been racking my brains for a while now for a project that I could run with little resource on mental health. I myself suffer from depression and anxiety and know a lot of people with the same and other mental health problems.

Much of society doesn’t understand the concept of mental health and the stigmas surrounding it are unjustified, untrue and occasionally downright unpleasant. How can I as an individual try to tackle this issue? Well I’ve always encouraged people to talk about mental health. I did that first by opening up about my own mental ill-health. Slowly people began to talk to me and share their own experiences of mental health whether it was positive or negative. Whether they were going through it at that time or they’d been through it previously.

I’ve spoken to a bunch of people now and so I thought it was time to get their stories out there in a slightly different way. Talking about your entire experience of mental health can be exhausting, uncomfortable and lengthy so I decided to take snapshots of people’s lives.

I’ve asked people to write up their average daily thoughts hour by hour from the moment they wake up to the moment they fall asleep.

I’ve got two aims for this project. The first is to show the general public that mental health affects people on a daily basis, that it’s complex, and that the stereotypes aren’t all they’re meant to be. There’s more to a person than their illnesses!

The second aim is that people who are taking part can see their thoughts written down and they can see all the little positives that they should start appreciating more and the negative things that they can potentially work on.

I’m also hoping that this will generate a bit of discussion and create a bit of a support network for those who have taken part!

If you want to get involved or want to find out more, please feel free to tweet me @albysaurus or email me alexquang1@gmail.com 🙂

Keep an eye out for #OnYourMind on twitter and instagram and stay tuned for our first post soon! 🙂

Shout out to Haaris for coming up with our hashtag!

See you all soon!