"Its okay to not be okay," World Mental Health Day

The Duke of Sussex is expected to re-visit two community initiatives in Nottingham for World Mental Health Day. Harry will return to Nottingham Academy – a place he has visited on several occasions – and Community Record Studio in St Ann’s on Thursday.

The duke, who spearheads mental health initiative Heads Together alongside the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, is to meet young people at both community projects which aim to improve mental well being.

In recent times, young people are disproportionately affected by loneliness, with 48 per cent of 18-29 year olds saying that they feel isolated, compared to one in three workers in general. Furthermore, 30 per cent of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic employees report having had negative experiences at work due to their ethnicity, and 79 per cent of LGBTQ+ staff have experienced a mental health problem where work was a cause or factor. And we’ve long known that women are more affected by financial worries than men – in no small part due to gender pay gaps.

Recently, national surveys from Time To Change indicate that people with improved attitudes towards those with mental health problems. The overall attitude trend between 2008 and 2016 saw a 9.6% upswing – that’s an estimated 4.1m people with better attitudes towards mental health in a relatively short period of time.

The NHS programme IAPT – or Improving Access To Psychological Therapies – appears to have been successful in helping those distressed ever since its launch on World Mental Health Day in 2007. The therapies you can access through IAPT are evidence-based and aimed at people with common mental health problems including depression, generalised anxiety disorder, phobias, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, panic disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.