#one to one person led problemsolving. like a space to work through the impacts of your MH issue and troubleshoot

[thedreadvampy]

I am going to jump off a building for mental health

(my friend organising the event has asked that I please stop phrasing it like this or at least clarify that when I jump off the TALLEST VERTICAL DISTILLERY IN SCOTLAND I will have a rope attached. it's an abseil. but I'm very scared of heights so on an endocrine level it's the same thing)

It is to help provide access to free community mental health support in Edinburgh, the Lothians, and the Borders, which is Super Fucking Important because uhhhhh Edinburgh local authority just made a 60% cut to statutory mental health funding a few months ago (after 15 years of austerity!!!! fucking monstrous to cut that hard there's nothing left to cut) but that wasn't enough! no! they're making I think another 50% cut this year??!! I work for the organisation I'm fundraising for and we are literally losing funding for projects that we'd already agreed funding for the year.

almost everyone I know has struggled for lack of access to basic mental health support. I was on the NHS waiting list for support for over 5 years before I was seen and that was almost a decade ago, it has got so much worse.

Full disclosure I do not think charities are the answer long term. I don't think that this fills the gap left by the government's refusal to fund anything other than sectioning or back-to-work schemes. but the services Health in Mind offer do help people and the people struggling locally right now can't fucking wait until we unfuck the system. Some help is better than no help and your donations could help build up the funding to keep vital projects like free counselling for CSA survivors; one on one support to help unfuck things like finances, housing and social isolation; peer support matching for people with specific life experiences; and addiction support and post-criminal-justice mental health support to help people rebuild after crisis.

the really nice thing about mental health support is that in my personal experience a little can go a long way. like actually a lot of the time what we need is to be heard and valued and given the space and grace to get out from under the weight of Everything Has Sucked Forever, and I have seen a lot of people get there from the services Health in Mind provide. idk. it's good. it's an efficient use of money and honestly one of the reasons I work here is because it's shockingly hard to find support that sits in a space between 'here is a short course of wellbeing exercises go back to work' and 'we will stop you topping yourself and then you're on your own'. and a lot of these services. are that. they help people find their feet a bit more and build some structure and support networks and that makes a big difference.