Mental Health Awareness Week: Mark Rowland

** Content warning: Contains references to poor mental health, suicide, self harm, anxiety, and depression **

Simon Blake is joined by Chief Executive of the Mental Health Foudation, Mark Rowland to discuss the upcoming Mental Health Awareness Week (13-19 May 2024) and why movement if good for our mental health. 

Transcript

Mental Health Awareness Week: Mark Rowland transcript

Simon Blake

Can you introduce yourself to the listeners please?

Mark Rowland

Yeah. Good afternoon, Simon. My name is Mark Rowland. I'm the Chief Executive of the Mental Health Foundation, and we've been around for almost 75 years and been a progressive force in mental health, bringing mental health out of the shadows. Equipping people to support and protect their mental health. 

My background is actually in International Development. I was raised in central Africa and was really focused for the first 15-20 years of my life on the question of poverty alleviation and came into mental health partly because of the mental health experience in my own family. 
 
 But also because, we started to see that the point of poverty alleviation was to live a more fulfilling, satisfied life, and for that, it wasn't just the reduction of physical deprivation. It was actually about the quality of our inner lives. And that's what drew me into this space.

Simon Blake

Excellent. And can you tell us a bit about mental Health Awareness Week, which you've also been running from the Mental Health Foundation for over 20 years?

Mark Rowland

Yes, that's right, 21 years. Started in 2001. Mental Health Awareness Week in this sense is  more famous than we are, but we started it with the conviction that we there was still a huge amount of taboo. There's a huge amount of misunderstanding. It wasn't actually long ago that we were doing frontal lobotomies for people experiencing mental ill health. 

That's literally the removal of the prefrontal cortex to try to fix stuff in the brain. And the idea of mental illness was much more seen as a dysfunction with you. The problem of your neurology rather than the question which we and others now are much more interested in exploring, which is what has happened to you and how does that affect how you deal what your defences are and your experiences in the present moment. And so mental health awareness we really tried to shine a light about the extent to which we all struggle in different ways and with an emphasis on the different, you know, our experiences are not all the same, but we wanted it to be an inclusive conversation and to look at different aspects of mental health.

Simon Blake

And just to be really clear to the listeners. You weren't doing the frontal lobotomies.

Mark Rowland

I wasn't. 

Simon Blake

Nor Mental Health Foundation.

Mark Rowland

No, we weren’t, but we were campaigning over the 75 years to really transition people out from an institutional response, medical response to mental ill health. And one in which the presupposition was keep people who are considered abnormal or crazy or away from society.

And we've seen this massive transition around openness of our mental health and integration around care in the community, and that's extended to care in our workplace, care, in our schools, care in our families. So, it's really this expansion of who needs to know what. In order to protect and support our mental health.

Simon Blake

And mental health awareness and understanding is obviously shifted. You know, it's quite significantly in that last 20 years and there's much more to do still, but what have been some of the recent themes that you've had for mental health Awareness Week?

Mark Rowland

We start every year in about September and we look, and we do poll the public and we ask them what are you interested in? What do you want to hear more about? 

We have varied it between looking at kind of like deficits and assets. So, sometimes we have looked at the challenges. So, we've looked at loneliness, the issue around stress. Issue of anxiety, body image. We've looked at, but we've also looked at the protective factors. So, we've looked at during COVID, we looked at the role of kindness, hugely underestimated action that we can do to protect our own mental health and support others. 

We looked at the theme of relationships. We looked at nature and this year we're looking at movement and it's really an opportunity to look at something that we kind of have on our peripheral vision but haven't spent enough time really focusing on and probably underestimate just how foundational those things are to the quality of our mental health.

Simon Blake

And just before we go on to talk about movement a bit more and what happens in mental Health Awareness Week, what can people do to get involved?

Mark Rowland

Yeah. I mean, I think there's a huge amount of resources that Mental Health First Aid England, Mental Health Foundation, and many others provide. These podcasts are a great example. The number one thing I always say is take time to reflect on where you're at and what's happening for you and what you could do small and practical, to support the mental health of you and those that you love. 

That's the number one aim of the week is to be more intentional. Come off autopilot and do something different. Protect our mental health and that if you scale that up over a week over a year over a lifetime is going to make a big difference to the quality of your mental health. 

So that's the number one aspiration for the week to start a public conversation and to get people thinking in new ways. We are going to be using a hashtag #MovingForMentalHealth, which people can share their experiences, what they're doing. We've got loads of activity planned. We’ve got wear it Green day. We've got fundraisers. We’ve got a big advertising campaign that we'll see in public displays up and down the busiest motorways, encouraging people to move for their mental health, will have different celebrities and public figures involved and will have a lot of work within the UK parliaments. The different devolved administrations as well. Looking at how to remove the barriers.

Simon Blake

And you started with a poll. And the outcome was movement for mental health. And why is that important as a, as a theme you talked about being in periphery peripheral vision? What's the link?

Mark Rowland

I mean, I think we are standing at a point in history where for most of human history, movement and physical activity has been baked into what we have had to do in order to survive. It's just part, if you look at indigenous communities around the world, they are moving and walking roughly double what the average European or American is doing and it's not because they're donning a leotard and going to the gym! 
 
 It's because dance and play and walk and digging are part physical activity is part of everyday life. And so, we are seeing in our contemporary world, a real reduction in the baked in movement that we all do as a matter of course, and we're seeing a correlated increase in poor mental health. 

So about 25% of us are not doing 30 minutes movement a week and so we are seeing on all the studies are really clear that if you move, it's one of the most foundational protective factors. So, we want to have a bit of space to explore that. What are the barriers? And how can we close that gap and really empower people to build movement into their daily lives? 

Another aspect we're going to be publishing a research study in the weeks I've been looking at the particular barriers that groups facing much greater disadvantage face for movement and what the enablers are and some of the insights are really interesting about the psychological, physical and environmental barriers. And it's a really important part of the week that we don't just talk about what you can do in terms of moving for your mental health, but how we can create positive environment that tackle barriers and enable draw people into the movement movement, as it were.

Simon Blake

Great. And I guess lots of people think about the physical activity and movement alongside the five a day sort of message, just thinking about it in relation to mental health. What you're saying is it helps to? And movement helps to protect our mental health on a day-to-day basis. And but the same messages as we have around physical activity. Just think about the connection to how you feel how you.

Mark Rowland

Are that's well, that's right. I mean, I think for a lot of people, the physical incentive to move for their physical health, it's not quite enough. But when we look at it through the lens of improving our mental health, which we all want, and in a person alive who doesn't want to be happier, we've under indexed the benefits. 

And one of the things we're going to be talking about in the week is if two people do the same 30 minutes of movement, how can it be that one person gets greater emotion and psychological benefit? What are they doing? So we want to even before we talk about moving more, we want to talk about moving better for your psychological benefit and that that involves. Thinking about who you're moving with, whether or not you're enjoying the movement you're doing where you are moving and what, what's the sort of setting for you and also the extent to which you can move? Move with a sort of gracious, compassionate sense of kindness to yourself, because if you're moving with that self-critical voice on autopilot, it's going to diminish any mental health benefits that you gain from it.

Simon Blake

That sounds like really interesting work. It's look forward to hearing more about and I am interested you talked about how movement was baked into our lives, and obviously we've seen quite dramatic change in our working lives over the recent years. And the MHFA England has a real interest about, you know, workplace mental health.

I wondered whether you could just give us any thoughts about what we should be thinking about as employers and as individuals when we're thinking about new, flexible ways of working where movement may or may not fit in easily or naturally, and yeah, any thoughts about that?

Mark Rowland

Yeah. I mean, I think you know some mentor first stating as a leader in this particular domain because you've worked out that. Bringing people together in in a working context is really important and it provides an opportunity for people to engage and collaborate. And if you're going to bring people into the office, it's got to be with a purpose and to and I think a lot of that involves some kind of interaction, some kind of physical movement or more physical movement.

And home working so I think employers need to think about how they sell the benefit of bringing people together and how they build interaction, collaboration and an element of play and movement into the working life in the office, in our office we've put in which we've never had before, but we've put in table football and pool tables and a dartboard just to get that kind of interaction and to entice people into the office. 

So, we've potentially lost something in because the commute was one way which you had to leave your house, and that for some people was a big part of their movement 5 a day. But we've also created greater flexibility, which enables people to build in movement. So, what we're saying to employees is, is help people to think about. Where they're going to get the movement? And what new routines and rituals can we set up to bake that movement into daily life? 

And if it doesn't mean going into the office, employers can't get greedy and say we want that time you stuck at your desk. It's actually encouraging and sending the signal that that hour can be spent having a coffee, walking with a friend, and that's good for work and it's good for the individual.

Simon Blake

OK, so that bit you're talking is is really there is no one way, but making sure that we're deliberately thinking about movement and its relationship to our mental health. Sounds like the number one message.

Mark Rowland

That's right. And I mean, we heard today that we have got some of the highest rates higher than pre pandemic of people who are not working or are out of work who it's in employees benefit to have to be promoting a holistic view of health in the workplace. And the data is so clear and I don't think people understand just how powerful regular small amounts of movement is to long term health, and employers should be interested in, in, in our health span, in how many years we are actually able to be fully healthy. 

And I was reading a study, I was reading a study last week about, they're called the Stanford runners. And they did a 20-year longitudinal study of a group of regular 50 plus runners in Stanford in America. They followed that cohort up compared to a non-running but non-smoking control group. Those who engage in regular short forms of running were 50% less likely to have a life limiting disability 20 years later. And 20%, better survival rate, so physical exercise does help increase the life span, but it's the health span that it does a really bigger contribution to and employers need to be interested in that rather than saying the old model, which is be at your desk. The only thing that matters is churning out. Increased productivity and I think that mixed messages that permission that signal that that's part of what employers are interested in I think is a really important message that bosses can give.

Simon Blake

And so, as we draw this little podcast to a close and could talk to you for at least another two hours. But as we draw it to a close, how important is movement to you? Are there any tips from your own life about?

Mark Rowland

Oh man I have to say movement has, I'll share a personal story because about 15 years ago my marriage broke down and it was a tough time for me, and I remember thinking, the only thing I can do to keep you know that I know I'm not going to do anyone any harm. And I'm not doing myself any harm is when I like, run and I haven't stopped running. 

It's a big part of my life and. It's really interesting and I later found out that, you know, one of the things that we understand about movement is its healing power and we later find out that well, I didn't realise that in terms of processing trauma, there's a really big link between what they call bilateral movement and the ability of the brain to be able to regulate its emotions and be able to process and difficult traumatic thoughts. 

They don't understand how it works or why it works. It just turns out that walking, running and that was my experience. So, I would just say, you know, set realistic goals and grab small opportunities whenever you can to move.

Simon Blake

Mark, thanks very much for coming and talking to us and I hope that mental health for last week is a great success and all credit to your organisation for organising it and. Encouraging so much collaboration so generously. Thank you. 

Mark Rowland

Thank you.