Welcome to this week’s update on equality and diversity news. Highlights include: Mental Health Awareness Week, recovering from mental health issues, a beautiful must-watch film by the first deaf student at St John’s College, and ACAS food and belief guide.
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week! Each year, the Mental Health Foundation campaigns on a specific theme around mental health. This year, they are trying to get us up and running – their campaign ‘Let’s get physical’ is themed on the positive impact of physical exercise and wellbeing on mental health.
Bournemouth University has produced a collection of three short films featuring people who live and work/study in Dorset sharing stories of their personal recovery from mental health issues, as a collaborative project between the university, the local trust, Dorset Mental Health Forum and Dorset Health Watch. You can watch the films on YouTube –
- Speaking up – Time to Change Dorset (T2C) Film 1
- You can recover – Time to Change Dorset (T2C) Film 2
- Stronger, better, person – Time to Change Dorset (T2C) Film 3
The project also aims to look at whether watching any of these videos has started to change or reinforce existing attitudes towards mental health issues – please fill in this survey to provide your response.
Last week, BBC’s See Hear, magazine for the deaf community, featured an episode on Helen who shares her experiences as a deaf student at St John’s College, Oxford University. Helen was one of the first people in the UK to receive a cochlear implant and is the first deaf student at St John’s. Helen’s made a beautiful must-watch film, ‘Hearing…But Not As You Know It’, which gives us an insight into her life; as Helen puts it, “Oxford University is proving to be a gateway to a whole new life. However, the cochlear implant has a hard time coping with the rigours of academia…”
Finally, in their workplace snippet on topical issues for May, ACAS (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) have provided useful information on ‘Food and belief: Dealing with special dietary needs’. Referring to the recent horsemeat scandal, ACAS discusses employers’ responsibility and the rule of ‘proportionate means’ when it comes to staff with religious dietary needs.
Send us your comments and contributions – Equality.and.Diversity@lse.ac.uk.
