Supporting Mental Health Awareness Month

During the month of May, in support of the Green Ribbon Campaign Morgan McKinley put Mental Health Awareness on the agenda with a series of events aimed at improving mental health awareness.

On May 7th, over 50 Morgan McKinley colleagues participated in the 'Darkness into light' run in aid of Pieta House with over €2,000 raised for this fantastic cause.

Cathal Sheridan visited Morgan McKinley as our guest speaker and his story of his mental health journey and how he tackled this was inspiring in its simplicity and informality. His message that 'it's OK not to be OK' was eloquently delivered.

We also had some thought provoking, informative (and at times hilarious) parenting workshops with expert Aoife Lee who gave our Morgan McKinley mums and dads some top tips on how to handle everyday tricky parenting situations. Managing work life balance can be challenging at the best of times but coupled with the responsibilities of raising kids it is easy to understand how family responsibilities can become a cause of stress. Aoife provided some great advice around the areas of managing challenging behaviour in children and everyone left the workshop feeling not only that they had learned something new, but also that many of the challenges we face are similar when it comes to managing work and family life.

In Morgan McKinley we endeavour to support our parents as best we can in terms of offering flexibility and support when it comes to managing work life balance. We do this through our return to work mentoring programme for mums returning from maternity leave and also through the provision of workshop sessions similar to the one hosted by Aoife.

To finish off our Mental Health Awareness month we hosted a Coffee Morning in each of our offices on Friday where the message was simply 'It's Good to Talk'. This marked the end of our formal events for May, but the activities throughout May really marked the beginning of our journey in Morgan McKinley towards increasing awareness around managing our mental health and well-being.