Tired, stressed ....?

Tired, stressed, you’ll feel better on Swisse. That’s how the television commercial goes. But there are other ways that can help in those situations. It’s mental health week, and a great opportunity for us to talk to each other about mental health.
Here are 10 tips put out by the Canadian Mental Health Association for their mental health week.

1. Build Confidence
Identify your abilities and weaknesses together, accept them build on them and do the best with what you have.

2. Eat right, Keep fit
A balanced diet, exercise and rest can help you to reduce stress and enjoy life.

3. Make Time for Family and Friends
These relationships need to be nurtured; if taken for granted they will not be there to share life's joys and sorrows.

4. Give and Accept Support
Friends and family relationships thrive when they are "put to the test".

5. Create a Meaningful Budget
Financial problems cause stress. Over-spending on our "wants" instead of our "needs" is often the culprit.

6. Volunteer
Being involved in community gives a sense of purpose and satisfaction that paid work cannot.

7. Manage Stress
We all have stressors in our lives but learning how to deal with them when they threaten to overwhelm us will maintain our mental health.

8. Find Strength in Numbers
Sharing a problem with others who have had similar experiences may help you find a solution and will make you feel less isolated.

9. Identify and Deal with Moods
We all need to find safe and constructive ways to express our feelings of anger, sadness, joy and fear.

10. Learn to Be at Peace with Yourself
Get to know who you are, what makes you really happy, and learn to balance what you can and cannot change about yourself.

If I can add number 11, it is Pray. Telling God about how I feel has been a significant benefit for me. Here's some good websites to follow up with more information about mental health.

http://www.mentalhealth.wa.gov.au/mental_illness_and_health.aspx
http://www.sane.org/information/factsheets-podcasts

Parking and Person-Centredness

Have you worked out why we're reverse parking yet? Keep watching this space for more information.

In the meantime I want to reflect back on some previous posts. I have been talking about person-centredness and how we recognise this in a service. There are a number of principles of person-centredness. Baptistcare is working in partnership with a research team at Curtin University to identify what person-centredness looks like in Baptistcare and this team has outlined these principles as follows:

Principle 1: Individual approaches. Each person has different dreams, relationships, preferences, abilities, needs, and resources. Acknowledging that every person is unique enables the support that is provided to be tailored specifically to them.

Principle 2: Self-Determination. The person is the expert about his/her life and is actively involved in choices that are made. If the person is unable to communicate needs and preferences, family members or friends act as his/her voice to ensure that what he/she wants is made possible.

Principles 3: Strengths-Based Approach. Service providers support each person to maximise his/her abilities by acknowledging his/her capacities and strengths. This serves to promote high expectations and individual development.

Principle 4: Social Inclusion. Social inclusion fosters the development of participation, citizenship and contribution within the community. In doing so, natural and meaningful relationships can be formed.

The fifth and final principle is planning. I’ll talk more about that in future.

Is it catching?

Is reverse parking catching? Watch out for more clues?

Whis this car parked in reverse?

Here's a clue ... go to the Anti-Poverty Week Facebook page.

Loneliness and social isolation

There are some great resources on the Internet. This one at seniors.gov.au is very relevant to my discussions about social inclusion:

Increasing your physical and social activity is the key to dealing with loneliness and social isolation. Ageing can often lead to social isolation as a result of increased frailty, lack of mobility, and the loss of friends and family. The resulting feelings can lead to depression and a range of physical symptoms such as sleep disorders, lack of appetite and lower energy levels. Here are symptoms and strategies for dealing with loneliness.

Experiences of loneliness can range from a vague feeling that something is not right to an intense deprivation and deep pain. Loneliness is not the same as being alone; it is the feeling of being alone and being sad about it. While everyone feels lonely some of the time, it is only when you feel trapped in your loneliness that it becomes a real problem.

Loneliness is a passive state, and as such people contribute to their loneliness by letting it continue and doing nothing to change it. To do so is to embrace the feelings of loneliness which leads to a sense of depression and helplessness which in turn leads to a more passive state and more depression.
The keys to alleviating these feelings are to admit and express feelings of loneliness which in turn lead to recognition of the connections to other aspects of life where changes can then be made.

Naturally, becoming more active is the main way to deal with loneliness. Contact friends, family or counsellors/pastors if suitable to help deal with the feelings of loneliness, especially if it is from bereavement.

Getting involved in clubs and associations with people who have similar interests can divert loneliness, widen networks of friends and increase social skills, provide structure and routine so that there are things to look forward to, and be enjoyable.

If you find you are having difficulty dealing with feelings of loneliness on your own, talk to a counsellor, local pastor or religious leader.

Social Inclusion as part of Person-centredness

I can still remember my first part time job as a teenager, working in a garage. I use the word garage because back in those dim dark days you could go to the same place to buy a car, get it fixed, and fill up your car with petrol. My job was to clean the greasy floor in the workshop, sweep the display area, and keep the service area tidy.

My dad had taught me that you should always fill up the car battery with distilled water, so it was a bit of a shock to be told by my boss that even though the bottle said “distilled water”, my job was to fill it with water from the tap.

This new workplace had its negatives but it also opened me up to experiences that helped to contribute to my development as a person. I was learning the importance of participating in a wider community than I had previously known, and as a result of that discovering more about the world in which I lived, and my own attitudes towards that world.

As we work our way in this blog through the principles of being person-centred, we come to social inclusion. Social inclusion fosters the development of participation, citizenship and contribution within the community. In doing so, natural and meaningful relationships can be formed.

When a person begins receiving a health or community service from a service provider there is a danger that everything is focussed around the immediate needs of the individual and how that impacts on the service provider. The result can be a withdrawal from other social activities and the result of that can be a loss of personal identity and independence.

By encouraging a person receiving services to maintain their existing social networks and even expanding those networks, we are acknowledging an important part of that person’s individuality.

How do you perceive social inclusion can contribute to being person-centred?

Soar with the Eagles

Thanks to Bank of Ideas for this week's story. It just had to be told as part of my theme of finding people's strengths:

A man found an eagle’s egg and placed it under a brooding hen. The eaglet hatched with the chickens and grew to be like them. He clucked and cackled, scratched the earth for worms, flapped his wings and managed to fly a few feet in the air.

Years passed. One day the eagle, now grown old saw a magnificent bird above him in the sky; it glided in a graceful majesty against the powerful wind, with scarcely a movement of its golden wings.

Spellbound the eagle asked – “Who’s that?”

“That’s the king of the birds, the eagle,” said his neighbour. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to earth – we’re chickens.”

So the eagle lived and died a chicken for that’s what he thought he was.

(Anthony de Mello)