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October – autumn is in full swing, Halloween is around the corner and, even scarier, so are fading daylight hours. It is a month where the feeling of change is abundant as we bid farewell to summer, and this air of change is something that may inspire customers, while causing others to feel a sense of worry. The pharmacy team can guide customers through this transient season, whichever way they are feeling, with the help of two excellent health awareness campaigns. The NHS is running Stoptober for the month of October, encouraging people to give quitting smoking a go, while the Mental Health Foundation is campaigning for mental health awareness on World Mental Health Day, on 10 October.
The start of Stoptober
Stoptober is the Department of Health and Social Care’s annual campaign to raise awareness for the benefits of stopping smoking, thereby encouraging the population to give it a go. It emphasises that around one month is the perfect amount of time to break the smoking habit, according to evidence that says if a smoker makes it 28 days smoke-free, they are five times more likely to quit for good. Stoptober has been running every year since 2012, and since then, it has helped over 2.5 million people make an attempt to stop smoking. This year, the goal of the campaign is to encourage the remaining five million smokers in the UK to give quitting a try.
Smoking, data shows, is the single biggest cause of preventable ill health and death in England. Many people are aware that smoking is harmful to health, but continue to smoke either way. This may be because people are not aware of the services available to them to help them stop smoking, and many who do try, rely on willpower alone, which is the most common approach to quitting smoking, despite being the least effective. The DHSC therefore implore pharmacy teams to take part in Stoptober, increasing their customers’ awareness of smoking cessation services and encouraging them to stop smoking. Participation is particularly important this year, as no additional paid media will accompany the campaign. The DHSC encourage pharmacy team to make use of their library of free, downloadable resources – including posters, toolkits, social media assets, email signatures and more – and get involved in the campaign running throughout October.
Mental health in the workplace
World Mental Health Day, this year, is following the theme of workplace mental health. “The theme highlights the importance of addressing mental health and wellbeing in the workplace, for the benefit of people, organisations, and communities,” says the Mental Health Foundation. On 10 October, why not take the time to remind your pharmacy team and customers alike the importance of coming together to discuss mental health? World Mental Health Day provides an opportunity for you to check in on friends, family, peers and colleagues – and pharmacy teams can encourage customers to do the same.
To put things into perspective, the Mental Health Foundation shared some statistics about workplace mental health in the UK.
- 15 per cent of UK workers are estimated to have an existing mental health condition
- 875,000 workers were recorded as suffering from work-related stress, depression and anxiety in 2022/2023
- The fifth most common reason for sickness absence in 2022 was mental health.
If you think about it, work is where people spend most of their time, and if the workplace is a stressful environment, the impact on a person’s mental health may be constant and long-lasting. A workplace can become more mentally healthy in many different ways. They could provide staff training on mental health, provide guidance on how to tackle bullying and discrimination, or, importantly, be a workplace which supports open conversations about mental health. While it has become more common to discuss and consider mental health in the workplace, there is still much progress to be made. This World Mental Health Day, make use of resources available from mentalhealth.org.uk to start the conversation in your pharmacy.
In Campaigns