Take Time to Talk

To date, millions of conversations have been sparked by Time to Talk Day, in schools, online, at home and at work allowing people to share their experiences without shame, often for the first time.

The event will be marked with a visit by Prince Harry to the London Ambulance Service where he will speak to members of staff and hear how the support of their colleagues has helped them overcome difficult times in their lives.

We will be supporting this event on our Twitter account (@AFNCCF) where we will be releasing a tweet on the hour for 24-hours to encourage people to have conversations that count. The tweets were developed by our peers, friends and young and parent champions based on longer conversations.

One of our Young Champions recalls a conversation she had last year: "I spoke with my old English teacher because I was feeling extremely down about a lapse I was having. She reminded me of the major improvements I had made over the year; she made me see that I was in fact getting better, and it motivated me to continue my progress in terms of my mental health."

Everyone is invited to take part and log their conversations on the Time to Talk website, and if you have a Twitter account, please feel free to share our tweets. We want to promote the idea that even casual conversations can have an unexpected impact if we listen carefully enough and probe sensitively.

On Monday we will be publishing a blog by Dr Sheila Redfern, Consultant Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychologist at the Anna Freud National Centre, on the evidence-base for promoting conversations. Watch our social media for this release.

Time to Talk invites you to join the conversation around mental health. So: talk, explore, tune in, share and listen.