Movement and mental health – lived experience insights
Whilst moving can have a positive impact on many people’s mental health, it isn’t always as simple as moving more to feel better. Here our lived experience partners, Caroline and Lyndsay, share how this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week theme “Movement: Moving more for our mental health” relates to them.
Caroline
When I was very unwell, I would try to follow the advice to move more – to go for a walk, to do some dancing – but it didn’t seem to dent my depression, and in a way that made me feel even worse about myself.
While my mental ill health is more manageable now, I still experience mental illness. I take medication each night, which has a side effect of making me tired, impacting how much I can exercise.
These days, I find that walking is something that supports my mental wellbeing and I usually make time to walk most days. If I’m feeling anxious or low, even a twenty-minute stroll can help me feel calmer and give me the time to think things through.
As someone who has experienced severe mental illness, I have a complicated relationship with exercise.
Caroline Butterwick, lived experience partner
I have always enjoyed getting outdoors, and have a well worn pair of walking boots. Some people are surprised by this, as I’m partially sighted. While there are barriers I face to walking as a visually impaired person, I still love hiking in the hills or going for a woodland trek, immersing myself in nature.
I love walking and being outdoors, but for me, my mental health is best supported by things like having appropriate counselling and having found the medication that works for me.
Support from services and a society that values and cares about those living with severe mental illness is key.
When people talk about how great exercise is for our mental health, I sometimes feel left out of the conversation. It’s important that we acknowledge that for many, it’s not straightforward.
Lyndsay
When depressed, we often can’t face the outside world and it robs us of the improved mood and mental clarity movement provides.
Daylight is very important to our moods and hormonal balance, not least improving sleep. Whatever it is you do to keep active, anything you do will have value, one of my key activities is gardening, it can be vigorous like digging / mowing or just potting things on.
Movement and mental health are so important to each other because many symptoms of mental health conditions discourage us from getting out there and moving.
Lyndsay, lived experience partner
Thankfully where I live has several therapeutic horticulture projects for people with mental health conditions.
I made the best use of one called Bridewell Gardens as it suited my interests, had a daily health walk and was free to attendees. I consider this to be the height of social prescribing
Taking powerful medication (antipsychotics) meant that I had to increase my activity levels, I gained 2 ½ stone and I wasn’t happy with the changes in me. I had been made aware years before that I could be referred to a local leisure centre by my GP. This scheme reduced what I paid per visit, or my monthly subscription by about half.
If you think you want to improve your physical health by swimming, doing exercise classes or going to the gym (as I do) find out what your local GP offers. By plugging away session after session I really saw results in weight-loss and improving strength.