The new story of mental health
Rebecca Howard, Leadership Psychotherapist and Founder of ShinyMind speaks at the 2021 Nature of Work Live event (02-04 November 2021)
Working alongside people in some of society’s most challenging jobs, ShinyMind created an evidence-based mental health and resilience app with the NHS, using human-centred design to understand their needs and create something which could enable them to feel and perform at their best.
Sharing 5 years of research into their empowerment approach to mental health, and stories of resilience and transformation from the front-line, delegates hear how ShinyMind – now showcased as a ‘Proven Innovation’ within the NHS – is helping the world to write a new story of mental health for everyone in the workplace.
Work is being re-imagined, in real time, and the opportunity exists right now to create new healthier, happier, and more effective ways of working – not just for knowledge workers but for all frontline essential workers – influenced and informed by nature and living ways of working.
Nature of Work Live is an inspirational 3-day virtual experience, where a growing community of change-makers and ‘make-changers’ come together to explore, understand, and bring to life a new story of work for a living age.
In her key-note discussion, Rebecca outlines the critical importance of human-centred design in building a resource around the needs of real people. ShinyMind is based on robust science and is evidence-backed. Created on a proven successful framework of live resilience programmes and coaching, bringing the benefits of psychotherapy to everyone, it contains over 100 interactive psychotherapeutic exercises, to support wellbeing and resilience. Developed over five years working alongside The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust, an award-winning specialist neurological trust, ShinyMind is unique in being showcased as a “Proven Innovation” on the Innovation Agency Exchange – the online resource managed by the Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) established by NHS England, as an innovation with evidence of impact suitable for wider adoption by the workforce.
ShinyMind believes everyone has the power to shine and Rebecca wanted to create the best mental health and well-being app in the world, and to help people to transform their lives for good. Mental wellbeing isn’t something 99% of us are ever taught how to achieve – in fact, we spend more time learning how to drive than we do learning how to think! Yet the most important relationship any of us has in our lifetime is with our own mind and body, as it is through that relationship that we experience life.
Most wellbeing apps focus on single areas – mindfulness, sleep issues; whereas good mental well-being is a holistic, joined-up state. The philosophy behind ShinyMind is a belief that everyone has the right to good mental health, and everyone has the right to be happy.
Concerns are rising over the amount of screen-time many of us spend on our devices, alongside growing unease about super-intelligent AI algorithms driving more and more personalised, but not very diverse, content towards us, narrowing our world view rather than broadening it. ShinyMind was developed with real people from many different roles, backgrounds, and challenges, and put them at the centre of its design, resources and voice. As a result, ShinyMind is a personal development and additive tool, not an addictive one, which enables a person to have a lifelong journey of discovery and growth – a resource where time spent is time well spent. ShinyMind is excited to be leading this new conversation of workplace health, and alongside NOW Live in helping to support and create a new story of work for a living age.