This week is Mental Health Awareness week and the theme this year surrounds kindness.

This year has provided a challenge for everyone. As we focus on a global pandemic, it is now more important than ever to highlight mental health awareness.

Councillor Iain Mooney, Barrow Borough Council Health & Well-being Spokesperson:

“Over the last couple of months, we have seen communities come together to help their neighbours. This kindness and solidarity has already helped many in our borough.

“It’s a troubling and uncertain time for everyone right now. Like mental health, Covid doesn’t discriminate and the added anxiety surrounding the current state of the country and world only adds to mental health pressures.

“The restrictions of lockdown can only help fuel a crisis, so now, more than ever, it’s important that we come together and support each other. Messaging that friend you haven’t spoken to in a while, messaging that friend you do speak to, but have never asked how they are feeling. We might not be able to hug the ones we love right now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be there for them in other ways.

“Over the last couple of months I have been working with Mind in Furness and Every Life Matters to provide support to people during lockdown. Every Life Matters have produced a fantastic booklet to support self care, which has been distributed around the borough and there are still a lot more available.

“Remember, there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end – Scott Adams.”

This week is also an important time to highlight the sad losses we have seen, and to try and work together to prevent and help.

The number of suicides in Barrow have risen by 500 per cent since 2010, according to new figures.

The figures also reveal a 15 per cent increase in suicides across Cumbria as a whole, rising from 44 in 2017 and 51 in 2018.

Help is available, please don’t suffer in silence.