When you recognise that someone needs support then offer and give it without waiting to be asked for it. We started How You Going Mate? in June of 2017 when I lost a friend of mine, Steve, to su***de. How you going mate? is built around the idea that good social connection and support is crucial to managing our mental health but at the times when we need that support, we don’t ask for it. In fact when our mental health is poor or we are feeling overwhelmed and unable to manage, we hide, we disconnect, we socially isolate or we do everything we can to make it look like everything's alright. But we won’t ask for support. So we need people to see this and offer us support to manage our mental health without waiting for us to ask for it or expecting us to ask for it. Something we call Active support for Mental Health. Active Support for mental health is about recognising when someone needs support, seeing an opportunity to give real, substantial and practical support to that person and giving that support without encouraging them to ask for it, waiting for them to ask for it or expecting them to ask for it first. Active Support is taking action to support someone to manage their mental health.
