World Mental Health Day is on 10th October 2023

The theme for 2023, set by the World Foundation of Mental Health, is 'Mental health is a universal human right'.

Good mental health is vital to our overall health and well-being. Yet one in eight people globally are living with mental health conditions, which can impact their physical health, their well-being, how they connect with others, and their livelihoods.

Sign up to one of our Well-being challenge workshops in October or November to support your employees mental wellbeing and learn practical skills and strategies, your employees can use to cope with stress, manage their emotions and enhance resilience

Exercise improves mental health by reducing anxiety, depression, and negative mood and by improving self-esteem and cognitive function. Exercise has also been found to alleviate symptoms such as low self-esteem and social withdrawal.

When you have depression or anxiety, exercise often seems like the last thing you want to do. But once you get motivated, exercise can make a big difference.

Exercise helps prevent and improve a number of health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis. Research on depression, anxiety and exercise shows that the psychological and physical benefits of exercise can also help improve mood and reduce anxiety.

Do you feel stress is negatively impacting your physical and mental wellbeing?

Many situations can cause a stress response in the body. Changes at work, illness, accidents, problems with relationships, family, money or housing can all cause stress. Even seemingly small daily hassles like someone pushing in a queue can make us feel stressed. What links all these situations is that we’re unable to predict and control what is happening to us, and so our body goes into a state of increased alertness. And these events can happen all the time - triggering the body’s stress response over and over again.

When the stress response becomes prolonged (chronic), it has a very different effect to the short bursts that enhance the body’s abilities. In many cases, the system controlling the stress response is no longer able to return to its normal state. Attention, memory, and the way we deal with emotions are negatively impacted. This long-term stress can contribute to both physical and mental illness through effects on the heart, immune and metabolic functions, and hormones acting on the brain.

Some of the emotional and behavioural symptoms of stress overlap with those of mental health conditions like anxiety or depression. This can make it hard to distinguish where one begins and the other ends, or which came first. Someone who is stressed may feel worried, down, unable to concentrate or make decisions, irritable and angry.

DBC Health Retreats release tension and recharge with a healthy plant based diet, fresh juices, hiking, pilates and plenty of rest.

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