Great Mental Health Day 2025
Friday 31st January is Great Mental Health Day and this is followed by Children’s Mental Health week (3rd-9th February). These events provide a chance to promote conversations about mental health and to raise awareness of local services that may be helpful. Great Mental Health Day is coordinated by Thrive LDN in London.
People who visit Hampstead Heath often report the benefits that green space has on their mental wellbeing. At Heath Hands, we believe that the benefits that nature can provide to our sense of wellbeing should be accessible for everyone, and it’s important there are multiple ways available to engage with the natural environment.
Participants in a Poetry workshop in summer 2024
To help achieve this, we offer a range of activities for people wanting to learn more about the Heath or engage further with the natural environment. This includes our regular practical volunteering sessions (gardening, habitat management), but also a varied programme of public activities. Our what’s on pages show some of the upcoming opportunities. Many of these activities provide the chance to look at nature in a more mindful way as well as the opportunity to enjoy the Heath as part of a group. This coming month, these range from drop-in nature discovery sessions to guided walks, nature mindfulness and nature journaling with a local artist (see images below). Our workshops change throughout the year to reflect the change in seasons. In the past, we have also offered activities, such as nature-inspired poetry workshops (pictured above), craft workshops and more - keep an eye on our events page, or you can join sign up to our newsletter or even join as a Friend of Heath Hands for more regular updates and additional member-only events.
Some of our activities are also run in partnership with community or support groups. We run a monthly wellbeing walk with Mind in Camden and regular activities with the Umoja Health Forum. Over the past few months, we have also been running a wellbeing project for parents and carers of young people with a mental or physical health diagnosis - we are reporting on the project now and hope to find funding to continue this important work!
If you work with a group, you can head over our community pages for more ways we can help, and find out how we aim to tackle poor mental health. If you work with young people and children, please take a look at our youth programmes and work with schools.
A group learning about trees on Hampstead Heath
Our staff volunteers carry out amazing work across the heath throughout the year. Many of our volunteers speak of the benefits this has on their health and mental wellbeing (also check out the blog written by Sue Cullinan on Hampstead Heath and Mental Health). Subject to funding, we are hoping to add more flexible sessions at different times of day to enable more people to take part.
In addition to working with the public we are proud to support the mental health of our staff and volunteers and have team members trained in Mental Health First Aid and Youth Mental Health First Aid.
If you need further support, visit Mind for specialist advice.
