Mind Your Head is encouraging as many people as possible to take 5-10 minutes to complete their second Community Survey.

The survey has been developed to track any changes in thoughts and attitudes since 2011, gather ideas about how to tackle stigma around mental health and help shape the development of a new support service.

The last survey was undertaken 3 years ago. Nearly 1,000 people completed the survey, and the results have been invaluable for informing the work of Mind Your Head and other organisations supporting mental health since then.

Since the original survey Mind Your Head have focused their work on education and continuing to tackle stigma by improving understanding of an illness that touches many lives in the Shetland community. In the last year alone over 1500 people have taken part in mental health training, educational workshops and awareness raising projects the charity has delivered. Furthermore, the website had over 20,000 unique visits seeking information and advice on mental health and wellbeing.

Mind Your Head are keen to know if things have changed since the last survey. For example 59% of respondents in 2011 felt that stigma associated with mental ill health was an issue and 87% of females and 78% of men knew someone who had experienced mental ill health. Establishing if statistics have changed will help the organisation know how to focus future plans. Allan Wishart, Chair of Mind Your Head said “My fellow Committee members and myself are encouraging as many people as possible to take a little time out, to complete this Survey, the results of which will be incredibly influential in our forward planning.”

Mind Your Head is a Shetland based charity, formed in 2005. It exists to promote mental health positively throughout Shetland. Their work includes the annual Fun Run, educational workshops, delivery of community training as well as awareness raising initiatives such as promoting Suicide Prevention Awareness week.

Jacqui Clark, Team Leader for Mind Your Head said “It is important for us to gather community feedback on our work and also ideas on how we should shape our proposed support service. We have identified a need for such a service and it is only right that the local community have a say in how that should be developed.”

The results of the survey will be gathered and published by August. Paper copies of the survey are being circulated widely within the community and it can be accessed here.

Surveys must be completed and returned to Mind Your Head before Friday 23rd of May. The team will be promoting the survey at Tesco’s on Saturday 19th April and Mareel on Saturday 26th April.