We’ve launched a campaign this month to start an open, honest and public conversation about the risks posed by unchecked depression. As Teacher Support Network’s chief executive, Julian Stanley, pointed out in this week’s SecEd column, an estimated 1 in 5 people (20 per cent of the population) will suffer from depression at some point in their lives.

Today, we would like you to speak up if you or someone you know has ever been affected by depression or mental health issues. We’ve create a number of tools in order to highlight this very real problem:

Save this image to your computer and then upload it as your Facebook or Twitter profile picture.

On Facebook

• Update your facebook status to read: “is speaking up about depression.  Depression is likely to be the second biggest health problem after heart disease by 2020, so why are we afraid to talk about the problem?  Teacher Support Network wants everyone who has lived with or knows someone who has lived with depression to speak up by copying and pasting this message into their status and changing their profile picture to a mouth.”
• Change your Facebook photo to an image of your (or any) mouth. If you don’t have a photo of a mouth handy, you can use ours (at right).
• Ask your friends, family and facebook groups to do the same.
• Ask your friends on Facebook to ask their other friends and family to do similar and so on, so that we begin to see the scale of the problem and how it affects us all.
• Update your Twitter feed to read: “@bewellworkwell I am speaking up about depression.”
• Change your Twitter photo to an image of a mouth. If you don’t have a picture of a mouth handy, you can use one that we made (at right).
• Ask your Twitter followers to do the same.
• Ask them to ask their Twitter followers to do similar and so on.

Other Things you can do

Follow us: We’re on Twitter and Facebook. Follow us and post something to us speaking up about how depression has effected you or someone near to you.

Factsheets: If you or someone you know is effected by depression, these factsheets could help.

What is depression?
Most people have times when they feel down. Depression is an illness where the sadness goes too far and doesn’t go away. Depression may look like ordinary sadness, but the difference is in the…

Treatments for depression
For more information on what depression is, see our leaflet called ‘ What is depression?’ This sheet outlines the signs and symptoms of depression and who is most at risk. Treatments for depression…

Case study: depression and alcoholism
Background This 52 year old male, Terry, a further education teacher called our services as a result of feeling under extreme pressure both at work and at home. Throughout his teaching…

What is seasonal affective disorder (SAD)?
What is seasonal affective disorder (SAD)? Experts believe SAD is related to a lack of daylight exposure, which explains why people feel well during spring and summer and only start experiencing…

Spotting the signs of a mental health problem
What is a mental health problem? There is wide spread confusion about the difference between ‘stress’ and a ‘mental health problem’. This applies not only to teachers, and lecturers but also to…