Caring for the carer: a volunteer check-in this mental health awareness month
May is often recognised as mental health awareness month in different countries and for us at TheOneHourProject, it feels especially relevant in two ways – the first being that we’re humbled to be partners with mental health NGOs and organisations and second, we’re also aware of the specific mental health toll that volunteering takes. While compassion and helping others fulfills us and our volunteers, it also takes energy, committed action and emotional giving, all of which are not infinite in supply.
Volunteers often ask others “How are you and how can I help”. But this time we’re volleying the question back, gently, to ask our volunteers “Wait, but how are you, really” as we invite them to take a pause and to take stock of their ‘mental wealth’.
When mental health takes a dip, it’s called “Compassion Fatigue”. We aren’t the mental health experts; however, so we sat down with Circle of Hope (a community-based mental health NGO in the Philippines) to give us watchouts and tips in handling this kind of emotional fatigue.
It’s Mom’s Month Too
How can we forget that May is also mother’s month? It may not even be a coincidence that mental health awareness month and mother’s month are both in May. Mothers afterall, have a unique mental health load. They’re primary caregivers in most households and working or not, shared load or not, mothers are often the most instinctively caring individuals who put the needs of others before their own.
But even our superheroes (they really are) are still human and more than ever, we need to take care of our moms and our mom-figures. This month, we also tackle the specific mental health costs and watchouts for mothers and their version of compassion fatigue.
Caring for ourselves is the most unselfish thing we can actually do
We’ve often heard that self-care is not selfish and this cannot be more true for volunteers and groundups and NGOs. We cannot pour from an empty cup. The best volunteer, mom, founder, anyone really that we can be is when we take care of ourselves. Here’s to keeping our mental wealth accounts in good shape, with regular deposits as much as we regularly withdraw.
