Mental Health Awareness Week 2024
This Mental Health Awareness Week (13-19 May 2024), we’re reflecting on the success of a recent internal campaign we ran here at Hunters. Throughout the month, we hosted events and discussions aimed at fostering a more open and supportive environment around mental health.
Our campaign kicked off with a powerful session led by Aman Khokhar, Samuel Isaac and Scott Battram. Their focus on stress and burnout resonated deeply, highlighting the crucial role of communication.
We learned the importance of speaking up: expressing when our workload feels overwhelming, letting colleagues understand the impact of stress and offering support to those we see struggling. Find out more about this event in Aman’s article: Putting mental health first: discussion on stress and burnout
Following this insightful discussion, Philippa Kum led a session with Jodie Hill – a champion for mental health awareness in the legal sector. Jodie’s story, which included a ‘mental breakthrough’ that paved the way for her to create Thrive Law, was both inspiring and educational.
Thrive Law prioritises wellbeing, diversity, inclusion and belonging – a model Jodie brought to life with her firsthand experience. She also shed light on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and its connection to mental health and neurodiversity. Read more about the event here: Raising awareness of good mental health in the workplace
To round off, we delved into a book club discussion of Dr Lucy Foulke’s book, ‘What Mental Health Really Is… (and what it isn’t)’. Dr Foulke’s argues that some aspects of the mental health conversation have gone too far, medicalising normal negative emotions and diverting resources from genuine mental illnesses. This challenged our understanding and highlighted the importance of accurate information.
Professor Jon Roiser, Professor of Neuroscience and Mental Health at UCL, joined the discussion and provided valuable insights, answered our questions and helped us clear some misconceptions.
By prioritising mental health awareness, we’re not just creating a more positive work environment – we’re also strengthening and enhancing the foundations of a thriving business. We’re proud to be able to provide an environment that offers open communication, a supportive team culture and a willingness to learn about mental health, neurodiversity, equality and diversity.
For more information on our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee at Hunters, please click here: Equality, diversity and inclusion