Bath Mind introduces… ‘Your Stories’ blog

Welcome. 

Your Stories is a new section on the Bath Mind website, here to provide a platform to share lived experience and personal stories on mental health and illness.

By contributing to the ‘Your Stories’ blog at Bath Mind, you can share your own lived experience whilst spreading awareness about mental health and mental illness. Speaking about mental health can be a powerful tool in changing people’s perspective.

Below, you’ll see some guidelines to help you in writing your Bath Mind blog. 

Writing your Blog

We’re very flexible in what your blog looks like! To give you some guidance, we’ve listed some formats and word count aims below. 

Format examples include:

  • Written piece (word document, WordPress blog etc.) 
  • Video/vlog 

You can aim for your blog to be anywhere between 300 and 900 words in length. You can also choose a photograph to sit alongside your story, however this is entirely optional.  

Your Stories Content

We’ll publish blogs/pieces that: 

  • Are aimed at changing the way people think and act about mental health
  • Are aimed at the general public as well as others with lived experience 
  • Offer an insight into life with mental illness
  • Talk about your experiences with Bath Mind (as a service user or a volunteer)
  • Describe your experiences in getting support for your mental health
What we can't Publish
  • Opinion pieces: We don’t, at this point in time publish opinion pieces from guest bloggers, e.g. views on political issues and policy around mental health, as we find these are best covered by the Mind national campaigns team. You can find out more about the campaign team here.
  • Clinical advice on managing a mental health problem
  • The promotion of commercial products and sales
Privacy and Online Safety

If you are interested in sharing your story for Bath Mind but worried about online safety – please let us know. We take the safety of our Your Stories bloggers very seriously.

You don’t have to use your real name if you don’t want to. We understand some people haven’t told their friends, family or employer about any struggles they have with their mental health, and aren’t yet ready to.

You’re welcome to use a pseudonym if you wish or post anonymously – just let us know when you email in your interest.

Please do not include anything that relates to your private information in your blog, like address or specific residency.  

Looking for Some Inspiration?

Some themes to think about:

  • What has helped you in the past with your mental health and wellbeing? 
  • What would you recommend to friends and/or loved ones who are supporting someone with mental ill health or wellbeing?
  • How has Bath Mind helped you?
  • Have you volunteered for Bath Mind? What did you get involved with?
  • There are some great examples out there, facilitated by the national organisation Time to Change
  • Take a look at our Student Blogger Gwen’s page   

Write a blog for Your Stories

If you’re interested in writing a blog, please send us a brief overview of what is it you’d like to write. This could briefly describe any events or moments you’d like to write about, your feelings, changes in your life or tips you’d like to share (around 100 to 200 words). 

If you’d like to write a series of posts, that’s great! We limit blog posts to 3 per writer, to ensure others get a fair chance in using the platform as well. 

Contact Jodie at [email protected] to submit your blog proposal. 

What happens once your blog is sent off?

We may edit your blog for clarity or to remove triggering content, but we will always share any edits with you before we publish. Please note that it may take a few weeks to publish the blog online due to limited staff capacity. We will contact each Your Stories writer when their piece is live.

We welcome all who are looking to share their experience with mental health and wellbeing.  We particularly welcome submissions from those in Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities, as well as LGBTQ+ communities, as published stories on lived experience and mental health from such communities are generally under-represented throughout the mental health sector.

These guidelines were created by utilising best practice used by Mind and Time to Change

Posted on: 29th May 2020

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