Event: Equally Fit – focus group on physical health inequalities for those with severe mental illness. 25th January 2017

Time: 25th January 2017, 1.30pm-3pm (refreshments from 1.15pm)
Venue: Inkwell, small room (Elgin Youth Cafe)

This focus group is hosted locally by the Moray Wellbeing Hub project for the ‘Equally Fit’ project in partnership with Support in Mind.

What is Equally Fit? This is a project that has been developed as a partnership between Support in Mind Scotland and Bipolar Scotland to tackle the unacceptable inequality between physical and mental health care for people who live with mental illness.

We know that more must be done to stop people with mental illness dying up to 20 years earlier than they should because of poor physical health,and that much of the problem relates to the stigma that people with mental illness still face, not just from the public, but actually within health and social care services themselves.

Aims of the Project: Support in Mind Scotland and Bipolar Scotland will work with people with lived experience of mental illness including those who provide care and support to relatives and friends to:

• Develop a Charter of Rights for Physical Health Equality that we can use to highlight this issue and the seriousness of not addressing it.

• Use this charter to develop a strategy for action that people can use in their local areas to talk to health professionals about the simple things that they could do to improve people’s experiences and improve quality of life.

Change Network: We can’t do this alone – we need the help of people with lived experience to make sure everything we do reflects real life and promotes solutions that will actually make a difference now and in the future. We also need help from professionals in health, social care or voluntary services who support people with mental illness and understand the issues from that perspective.   It is only by working together that we will address this unacceptable stigma that people face.

We want to create a network of at least 100 people across Scotland, 75% of whom must be people who have experience of mental illness either themselves or as a relative or carer of someone with mental illness.

Join us in Moray to hear more about this project and hear how you can get involved to create change.