Hello, my name is Grace and I am the Senior Community Facilitator within the ResiLife team.

We talk about Seasonal Affective Disorder often and it is assumed that depression and low mood or other mental health issues hit hardest in the winter. It’s lesser known that seasonal affective disorder can also present with summer depression (see Wehr et al., 1987). This is not to say that summertime sadness is always as severe as a mental illness, but summertime can certainly be a difficult time for some. The added pressure to be ‘living your best life’ and the commonly held belief that summer is for fun and sun can worsen the experience for those individuals who may be suffering from their mental health. It also doesn’t help that English summers are rarely even summer weather…

With this in mind, I think it is important to take care of ourselves during the next few months and the ResiLife team are here to support you; whether you’re an incoming student coming into your first year as a postgraduate or undergraduate, or an existing student who’s (hopefully) busy celebrating the end of the university year. To stay in touch with us, join our team HERE and follow us on social media @kingsresilife.

Physical and mental self-care can be improved in various ways. Physical health is somewhat obvious: sun-cream (maybe not obvious in England this year but still a good habit to get into), water, eating (well, I’m talking 5-a-day and a lot of ice cream) and mindful movement to name a few. There are also BeActive classes will be running for the next few weeks and you can sign up to them HERE. Following this, ‘Move your Mind’ classes will be running throughout the summer and you can join them too by clicking HERE. These classes are designed to improve both your physical and mental wellbeing – two birds one stone. My suggestions to help with your mental health over summer would be to try meditation or mindfulness classes. To see some free meditations and try them out, you can see them on my profile @resilifegrace. Additionally, you could try a new podcast such as the ‘Practise makes progress’ podcast, run by Ellie McGrath – who we had as a guest speaker on our Tea Talks at Resilife, and you can also find an episode I did with her about the process of forgiving yourself. You can try meditating in your bedroom, outside, or on the beach if you can get there safely…

We wish you a lovely summer holidays and if you need anything please don’t hesitate to get in touch! We will be more than happy to help – even if all you want is a friendly chat. If you are new, please come along to our events in September – we can’t wait to meet you and welcome you into our community.