Mental health

Good mental health and wellbeing is important for everyone.  The Five Ways To Wellbeing are a guide to things we can do that boost our mental health and wellbeing the five ways are: Connect, Keep Learning, Be Active, Take Notice and Give, details can be found below; 

Connect:  

Connection to a familiar environment and routine will help maintain confidence and will offer reassurance.  This can include outdoor spaces that allow for connections with nature.  Maintaining connections with people and activities that brought pleasure or enjoyment in the past will also boost wellbeing.  Sometimes a good chat is the best way to connect with others, you may find telephone support lines like Silverline Scotland (tel.  0800 4 70 80 90) helpful.   

Keep learning:   

While learning new activities may be difficult for you as dementia progresses it is important that you have the opportunity to relearn old skills or engage in other purposeful activity such as craft work or painting.  The sense of satisfaction associated with such activities will help boost your mood and can be built in to you daily or weekly routine. 

Be Active:  

Being active can help reduce stress, boost energy levels, help us to be more alert and also help us to sleep better.  Please see the other sections in the app which offer advice, guidance and suggestions about physical activity 

Take Notice: 

Taking notice can mean looking at our environment and noticing things like the changing colour of leaves in autumn or a spider on its web.  Other activities which involve taking notice can include things like exploring textures of fabrics or objects or using other senses such as taste and smell.  One activity that can be helpful when we are experiencing distress or difficult emotions follows a 5,4,3,2,1 pattern: You identify 5 things you can see, 4 things you can physically feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell and then 1 thing that you can taste. 

Give: 

Giving to others helps us to feel useful and valued, sometimes we feel as though we have little to offer others but even giving a compliment, a smile or a warm greeting to those around you can help to boost both their mood and yours.  Being part of a community group is a way of giving, planting flowers for others to enjoy or knitting, such as hats or toys for babies in hospital, are also ways to give.  Giving brings happiness to the giver as well as touching the lives of others.  

Activities and choices that support good physical health will also support good mental health and suggestions about these can be found in the lifestyle section of the app.