October is mental health month, and Charles Darwin University (CDU) library staff is hosting a morning tea to promote awareness of depression and anxiety.
Students and staff are invited to CDU’s Casuarina library foyer for coffee and cupcakes. Tea drinkers will also be catered for.
Cupcakes will be covered in blue icing to promote Beyondblue’s Anxiety and Depression Awareness Month. Beyondblue is a not-for-profit organisation that encourages people to look for tell-tale signs of depression in their family and friends and to seek help for these problems.
Beyondblue wants people to know they can help by:
- Talking openly about depression and assisting them to find information from a website or library
- Indicating that you have noticed a change in their behaviour
- Letting them know you’re there to listen without being judgmental
- Suggesting they go to a doctor or health professional
- Assisting them to make an appointment
- Accompanying them to their appointment with a doctor or mental health professional
- Following them up after the appointment – ask how their appointment went
- Encouraging them to exercise and eat well
Encouraging or getting them involved in social activities
- Discouraging them from treating themselves with alcohol or other drugs
Keeping in touch and encouraging close friends and family to do the same.
While people with depression don’t get better without help, recovery from depression is common. Depression is an illness, not a weakness, and people shouldn’t feel ashamed to seek help.
It would be unhelpful to:
- Put pressure on them by telling them to ”snap out of it” or ”get their act together”
- Stay away or avoid them
- Tell them they just need to stay busy or get out more
- Pressure them to party more or wipe out how they’re feeling with drugs and alcohol
Assume the problem will just go away.
Promotional bags, information and brochures provided by Beyondblue will be available at the morning tea on Friday October 17 from 10am until 11am.
For more information about the event, contact Jessica Denton on ext 6174.
For more information about depression, check out: www.beyondblue.org.au
or www.youthbeyondblue.com (Beyondblue’s website for young people).