Sharing stories and experiences encourages people to talk and raise awareness, and will allow people to realise they are not alone. Personal experiences can provide an insight into the thoughts and feelings experienced when a low mood and thought processes become something more concerning. Stories can help others recognise symptoms and behaviours they may otherwise dismiss. Early intervention can help reduce the risk of a mental ill health episode from escalating.

Whilst attitudes are slowly changing mental ill health is still a taboo subject with many choosing not to tell anyone of a diagnosis for fear of being labelled and judged.

Our #letsclearthecloud campaign has been created to allow you to share your open and honest stories, it is a way to help overcome the stigma associated with mental ill health. Sharing your experiences is important to help improve the lives of those around us.

There are still too many that don’t have the knowledge to understand mental illness. We need to educate, education leads to understanding, when there is understanding it leads to help.

We want to share stories from different perspectives. We are encouraging anyone who has experienced mental ill health either themselves, as a carer or in their work to send in their story.

Please note, the information sent to us will be used on our website and social media pages. We aim to use as many of your stories as we can, however we will not use any written text that contains offensive language or gestures. Dependant on the content of items received we may need to add trigger warnings to some.