Supporting a loved one through mental health challenges can feel overwhelming, however even small gestures can make a meaningful difference. If you're wondering how to help a friend with mental health concerns, the most important thing you can do is show up with patience, kindness and an open mind. You don’t need to have all the answers — listening and offering a safe space can go a long way.

Whether your friend is experiencing anxiety, depression or another challenge, learning how to help a friend with mental health problems can ensure you offer the right kind of support while also taking care of yourself.

Ahead of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week, in which the national theme is “Community”, this week guest writer Beth Rush returns for her fourth article for Calmer, sharing an overview of different mental health conditions, effective communication strategies to help a friend in need, and practical ways to offer them support.

What does it mean to you to meaningfully invest in mental health at work?

There are so many ways to look at this, and organisations are increasingly recognising their responsibility to address mental health in the workplace.

For us, it means going beyond offering the occasional wellness webinar or posting about mental health awareness on social media. It involves embedding mental health awareness, education and support into an organisation's culture, team dynamics, and leadership structure - as one of our long-term valued clients Rickard Luckin puts it, embedding wellbeing “into the DNA of our firm”.

Last month, our team launched our brand new online course for senior leaders and managers: Managers introduction to mental health at work. We are so excited to add this product to our roster of services and support as many people as possible through this accessible training. All drawn from our years of live training experience, coming across the most pressing issues and questions raised in our sessions about managing mental health at work, we are beyond proud to create this set of bite-sized training modules.

To mark this product launch, we interviewed our founder and director, Tania Diggory, to dive into how mental health education has evolved over the years, debunk mental health myths, and explore why workplace mental health training is more pertinent now than ever before.

Spring is synonymous with renewal, offering a chance to shed the heaviness of winter and embrace a fresh perspective. As the days grow longer and brighter, flowers bloom and trees regain their healthy green leaves, nature inspires us to embrace growth and renewal in our own lives.

This week, we welcome guest writers John Burnett and Tony Waddington to explore the wide-ranging benefits of walking and connecting with nature for your mental health.

A key debate in our modern era is whether the blue wavelengths emitted from our lights and devices disrupt our sleep.

For the first 10,000 generations of human existence, we never had to worry about exposure to blue light in the evenings. Wood fires and candles contained virtually no blue, and nights were dark. But in the last ten years, we have entered the era of ubiquitous blue-rich LEDs in our computer and mobile device screens, and in the lights in our homes and workplaces.

Some sleep scientists claim that removing evening blue light is unnecessary because it doesn’t affect sleep onset. Other experts tell you to protect your health by avoiding blue-containing light after sunset. Who is correct? It turns out, like many debates, it is all a matter of definition of what you mean by “blue”, and what you mean by “disrupted sleep”.

This week, guest writer Dr Martin Moore-Ede M.D., Ph.D., author of Light Doctor, explores the different perspectives and research-led insights on the effects of blue light on our sleep, and what we can do to ensure a healthy sleep routine.