Mental Health Awareness Week starts today with a focus on five ways to improve wellbeing.
The ‘Five Ways, Five Days’ theme asks New Zealanders to ‘take notice’ (me aro tonu), give (tukua), ‘be active’ (me kori tonu), ‘connect’ (me whakawhanaunga), and ‘keep learning’ (me ako tonu).
One in five people experience a mental illness and or addiction each year.
Mental Health Foundation Māori engagement team member Astley Nathan (Ngāpuhi, Waikato Tainui, Ngāti Whātua) says the ways to improve people’s mental well-being are “science-backed, but not rocket science”.
“[For example], taking notice of your environment, things that make you feel good, go out for a walk and you see a flower, then you go ‘That’s a beautiful flower’. That keeps you in the present moment.
“We don’t want to be thinking of the past and regret it. We don’t want to be worrying about anxiety thinking of the future. We want to be here in the now and in the moment.
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