This year, Mental Health Awareness Week is taking place from 14th to 20th May 2018 and, once again, IP Inclusive will be running events and seminars during this week. This year, MHAW is focussing on stress. Research has shown that 16 million people experience a mental health problem each year, and stress is a key factor in this. By tackling stress, we can go a long way to tackle mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, and, in some instances, self-harm and suicide. The IP profession can often be stressful – long days, complex legal problems, client-based challenges, and deadline management can often take its toll on the mental health of people working in the sector, which is why IP Inclusive hope many of you will be able to participate in one of our MHAW events this year.We currently have two events for MHAW 2018:
- Friday 11th May 2018 – a breakfast meeting on managing mental ill health at work, kindly hosted by Brodies LLP in Glasgow. To register, please head here. Brodies LLP are one of the signatories to the IP Inclusive Charter for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
- Tuesday 15th May 2018 – a joint CIPA & LawCare lunchtime webinar on why looking after your mental health is so important. You can register for the event here.
These events will be open to all IP professionals. That means not only fee earners but also the professionals who work with them, for example secretaries, IP administrators and paralegals, HR professionals, searchers, translators and Patent Office examiners. These are issues which affect the whole team – let’s reach out to everyone and include them in the discussion.
We’ll update this blog with information about more MHAW venues and events soon. In the meantime, you can find out more about Mental Health Awareness Week here and if you’re on Twitter, by following the hashtag #MHAW18.
If you are organising your own event for Mental Health Awareness Week, please let us know and we’ll add it to this blog.