Mental Health is not just for September

As September segues into October and we lean into the winter months, we in Shine, a national charity that supports people with lived experience of mental illness and their families, reflect on the success of our 2024 Green Ribbon Campaign. While the initiative runs year round, we run a concentrate campaign each September.

Hundreds of activities and initiatives were organised by our corporate and business partners, organisations, public bodies, national and regional support groups and organisations, sporting and community groups, and individual volunteers across the country in a tremendous show of support for our campaign in 2024 to reduce stigma around mental health. In doing so they raised awareness, facilitated and encouraged open conversations around mental health and helped to tackle disinformation and discrimination.  

People may have noticed landmark buildings lit up in green, or seen and spoke with us at Electric Picnic, or the Ploughing Championships, at talks we gave in their workplaces, talking and providing information on college campuses, at festivals and myriad other events.  

Everywhere we went, people shared their stories with us of a loved one; son, daughter, brother, sister, friend who had, or are living with mental health challenges. A common theme was gratitude that we in Ireland are opening up more and are more willing to talk about mental health, and the need for us to do even more of that. That was almost always followed by their views on the level of treatment, services and support currently available and the need for more, something we in Shine are acutely aware of, having been a signatory to a letter from over 60 mental health leaders to An Taoiseach Simon Harris calling on the Government to invest an additional €120m in Ireland’s mental health services in Budget 2025.  

At the outset of this year’s Green Ribbon Campaign, I spoke of the need to move it beyond a campaign, to become a social movement to bring about the real change needed in attitudes and perception of mental illness. The ultimate aim is to achieve parity – for mental health to be considered, and treated, in the same way that physical health is. And so, with more initiatives and activities planned to mark World Mental Health Day on October 10^th, we extend the Green Ribbon Campaign beyond September and begin the transition towards a social movement for significant and longlasting change that will reflect on us as a more compassionate and caring society.  

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Nicola Byrne

CEO

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