Running from 15-21 May 2023, this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week theme is anxiety. How do we understand, tackle and cope with it?

Each year, the Mental Health Foundation promotes Mental Health Awareness Week as an ideal time for us all to think about mental health, tackle stigma and find out how we can create a society that prevents mental health problems from developing or spiralling out of control.

The theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week is anxiety. Anxiety is a normal emotion in each of us, but can sometimes get out of control, causing it to develop into a mental health challenge. Lots of things can lead to feelings of anxiety, including: friendships and relationships, starting a new job (or losing one) or other big life events and changes. Particularly in the current cost of living crisis that is affecting so many people nationwide, we may experience financial anxieties when it comes to things to do with money and not being able to meet our basic needs, like heating our homes or buying food. There are, however, steps we can take to make anxiety easier to manage and prevent it from becoming a huge problem. Some self-help methods include, but are not limited to:

  • Identifying your anxiety triggers and taking steps to avoid them
  • Talking to someone you trust
  • Looking after your physical health
  • Make sleep a priority
  • Keeping a journal or thought diaries.

To mark Mental Health Awareness here at Telefónica Tech, we were delighted to welcome Thomas Dunning – Mental Health activist, TEDx speaker and founder of Mental Health Runner – on Wednesday 17 May to deliver a session on anxiety to help us better understand: what it means, his experiences, how to spot anxiety and developing coping mechanisms for dealing with it. This virtual session was aired across Microsoft Teams so Telefónica Techists from across the country could get involved. We also held viewing parties in our Glasgow and Inverurie offices so our people could come together to watch the session collectively.

Above: Telefónica Tech colleagues gather in the Glasgow office to watch Thomas’ session on battling and dealing with anxiety.

For more information on anxiety, you can access lots of resources here.