Mental Health Awareness Week 2021

This year the Mental Health Foundation hosted Mental Health Awareness Week between 10th - 16th May 2021. The week-long event encourages the country to focus on their mental health and to start conversations about mental wellbeing.

The BorrowMyDoggy community was started to share “Pawprints of Happiness” on the lives of dogs and people, and we continue to strive to be a positive and caring community. It’s no secret that dogs, and spending quality time with one, can positively benefit humans - not only our physical health, but mentally too. This year to mark Mental Health Awareness Week we took the opportunity to highlight the power of dogs and share the amazing impact they have on our lives.

Heartwarming stories

Our community is at the heart of everything we do, and we love hearing their experiences and stories of how spending time and sharing a dog has benefited their mental wellbeing. Dogs benefit from extra love and attention, owners get help with their dogs with added peace of mind, and borrowers get to spend some happy time with a dog. This heartwarming feedback about BorrowMyDoggy is always wonderful to see!

Be more dog (with Luminate)

This last year has been a struggle for most of us. From being stuck indoors to tackling the difficulties of adapting to home working, from searching for new jobs to having challenging new restrictions at work, whatever your situation, many throughout the country have seen their mental wellbeing suffer. However, our furry friends have been a shining beacon in these dark times and with the help from our friends at Luminate, creating happier and healthier workplaces, we took a closer look at how being a bit more like our dogs can actually improve our mental health.

Mindfulness session (with Nuffield Health)

Mindfulness can help us to reduce stress and mis-directed focus. Practicing regularly can enhance our performance, our productivity and allow us to be more aware of observing our own mind, and improve how we treat ourselves.

We were excited to hear that Nuffield Health, the UK’s largest health charity, was launching a new Mindfulness with a dog session, which we believe is pawfect for our community! Ready to take part? Take 10 minutes and see more about the session here.

But what can dogs do - Ask a Therapist (with Spill)

“Dogs are very good at doing emotional heavy lifting, even though they have no idea that they’re doing it."

Thanks to our friends at Spill, the all-in-one mental health support through Slack, we spoke with therapist Graham, who shares more about current mental health concerns, and also what he believes are the important role dogs can play in improving our mental wellbeing. To learn more and hear about Graham’s beautiful 3 year old, short-sighted Labrador, Daisy, check it out here now.

Virtual dog walk

We’ve already spoken briefly about mindfulness and being present in the moment… Did you know, that in a way, dogs are experts at being mindful?

We’ve created a virtual dog walk, where you can follow along with doggy member Wicket on a walk to the beach in Norfolk. Sit back, relax and feel at ease by being a bit more dog…

That’s been our roundup of BorrowMyDoggy’s participation in Mental Health Awareness Week 2021. We hope we may have encouraged you to reflect on your mental wellbeing, to start conversations and to hopefully give you a few positive ways to improve your mental health. If you or someone you are close to has mental health concerns here are some useful resources:

Mind

Mental Health Foundation

Samaritans

Be happy, be kind and most importantly be more dog!