The new Sheffield Mental Health Guide, a website built by Sheffield Flourish, has been launched.
The Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Anne Murphy, cut the ribbon at the launch event attended by over 100 people on Monday 15th January, also known as Blue Monday, the saddest day of the year.
sheffieldmentalhealth.co.uk is designed to be the go-to place for all aspects of mental health in the city, including a ‘need urgent help’ button on all its pages.
It is the culmination of nine month’s hard work since Sheffield Flourish was commissioned to build the website.
At the launch event, held at The Workstation in Sheffield city centre, representatives of Sheffield City Council praised Sheffield Flourish’s work.
The Council’s Commissioning Officer for Mental Health, Dave Luck, called the project “the best example of co-production I’ve seen”, adding it is vital it is shared far and wide particularly on social media.
Greg Fell, Director of Public Health at the Council, lauded Sheffield Flourish’s role in the project before encouraging feedback about the website from all its users.
Sheffield Flourish’s Jo Eckersley and Lisa Thompson-Cox hosted the event, including Lisa getting everyone to join in with some exercises midway through so no one got bored!
Jo gave an overview of the website, which was projected on to a big screen, and led a question and answer session.
The questions showed the event was being attended by a cross section of people involved in mental health in all sorts of ways.
James Poulter spoke about his involvement as a volunteer for the Mental Health Guide Steering Group, which had looked at equivalent websites from Leeds to New York City as the group decided what would work best for Sheffield.
The winner of the ‘Where I am at’ photo competition, which was run in the build-up to the launch, was announced. Liz Davies won the public vote for her photo titled ‘Hope in the darkness’ of a supermoon above a church, which had ‘hope’ written on in lights.
The winning entry fitted neatly with a message from the Lord Mayor, who along with family members has worked in mental health.
She highlighted the need to fight for more funding for mental health, which she believes affects everyone at some point in their lives.
