By Joanna Williams, Head of Counselling at Professional Help. ‘Prevention is better than cure’. It’s an old adage, and one that we’re now beginning to apply to mental health as well as physical. The World Federation for Mental Health has decided that the theme for this year’s World Mental Health Day should be Suicide Prevention,…

By Catherine Betley, Managing Director of Professional Help and founder of GriefChat. After a significant loss, bereaved people have traditionally been supported by their communities, their religious or social groups and their friends and family. Some 60 years ago, one of the first bereavement care services in the world, Cruse Bereavement Care, was launched to…

I was struck this week by the results of a study, carried out by the University of Stirling and widely reported in the press, that looked at the impact of the death of a friend on mental and physical health. The research found that this type of bereavement can have serious effects for up to…

I was recently asked to write about five things I wish people knew about grief, by the wonderful lifedeathwhatever.com who are working to open up conversations about death and dying. Their campaign, #FiveThings is a collection of the five things that Life. Death. Whatever. collaborators want people to know about life, death and everything in…

Mother’s Day can be an unwelcome time of year for a lot of people. If you’re estranged from your mother or don’t have a good relationship; if you are having difficulty with fertility; and of course, if you are grieving the loss of a mother or a child, or supporting children who have lost their…

Written by Catherine Betley, MD of Professional Help and GriefChat® At the risk of seriously dating myself, I’ll admit to being a child of the early ‘90s. As a teenager, I had fairly eclectic musical tastes and considered myself to be something of a rock/indie chick. Growing up in a northern town just a stone’s…

Written by Joanna Barnard, Head of Counselling at Professional Help. If you’re feeling particularly blue this Monday, it would seem you’re not alone. Once upon a time, someone somewhere decreed that the third Monday in January was the most miserable day of the year. It’s not difficult to see the logic: post-Christmas, the lights have…

Every day in the UK, 15 babies die during birth or shortly after. As well as my role managing our GriefChat service, I am also a bereavement care trainer for Sands, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity. I go to hospitals and teach midwives, neonatal nurses and other health professionals how they can best care…

As another World Mental Health Day draws to a close, with all its hashtags, messages of solidarity and support, and the UK government announcing its appointment of a minister for suicide prevention, I find myself thinking: OK, but what happens tomorrow? I welcome any initiative that breaks down the stigma that has for too long…