PESI UK Announces Free Mental Health Awareness Summit

Mental Health Awareness Week, which takes place annually in the UK each May, has never felt quite so urgent. Hosted by the Mental Health Foundation from May 18-24, this year’s event will take place amid a pandemic that has provoked huge, sudden change, put society as we know it under unprecedented pressure, and exerted very personal tolls.

The immediate threat to life posed by Covid-19 may have grabbed the early headlines. But as the death toll rises and lockdown drags on, the psychological impact is becoming clearer – especially to those of us working on the mental health frontline. Divorce applications and reports of domestic violence are increasing. Sleep difficulties and disordered eating are on the rise. Anxiety and depression are widespread. Many of us have never experienced uncertainty on this simultaneous micro and macro level. When social distancing measures are relaxed, the scale of the economic disaster may come more sharply in to sight. 

Increasingly, this world public health emergency is a global mental health emergency.

Which is where we come in. Since March, PESI UK has been supporting its usership and readership of mental health practitioners to respond to this crisis, with bespoke online trainings and blogs around key issues and approaches. Whether you are a psychotherapist, counsellor, psychologist, social worker, psychiatrist, teacher or occupational therapist, if your work benefits from therapeutic insight, we hope you will have found PESI UK an enriching and reassuring resource at this uniquely challenging time.

So when Mental Health Awareness Week changed this year’s theme to ‘kindness’, in view of the ‘power and potential’ of this ‘cornerstone of our individual and collective mental health’, we wanted to do something special in kind.

And here it is…

Between May 18-22, we are inviting you and your colleagues to attend an online Mental Health Summit bringing together eight leading clinicians and thought leaders.

Across the five days, you will be able to access specially delivered talks addressing the key psychological issues of this unparalleled moment.

You’ll learn from Dan Siegel about neuroscience and Janina Fisher about trauma. You’ll hear from Sue Johnson and Dan Hughes about the impact, respectively, on couples and children. And you’ll have the chance to reflect with Paul Farmer, CEO of Mind, on the future of the nation’s mental health. 

And it’s all completely free.

We hope you will join us from May 18 onwards for what promises to be a week of world-class resourcing and reflecting.

See below for the full line-up, and please help us to strengthen relationships, develop community and deepen solidarity in the mental health professions at this time by sharing the news of PESI UK’s free Mental Health Summit among your colleagues.

To register and for more information about the focus of each event click here. We have to limit the capacity for these online events to 5,000 – so we advise advance booking to avoid disappointment.  

PESI UK Mental Health Summit, May 18-22: The line-up

Monday May 18:

• Sarah Niblock, Chief Executive UKCP, 12noon-1pm
• Dan Siegel on neuroscience, 4-5pm

Tuesday May 19:

• Paul Farmer, CEO of Mind, 12noon-1pm
• Caroline Welch, CEO and co-founder of the Mindsight Institute, 4-5pm

Wednesday May 20:

• Laura Falconer, Barnardo’s Assistant Director for Impact of Mental Health and Wellbeing, 12noon-1pm
• Janina Fisher on trauma, 4-5pm

Thursday May 21

• Dan Hughes on children and adolescents, 4-5pm

Friday May 22

Sue Johnson on couples and relationships, 4-5pm