See Change
Ireland's national mental health stigma reduction programme
Barbara began as one of See Changes first volunteers. She helped to launch the programme nationally in 2010, and was one of the early voices to publicly share her personal experience with mental health difficulties.
After engaging in national research and helping to build a new workplace programme focusing in stigma and discrimination, Barbara was then made a workplace facilitator in early 2013. Barbara was appointed as See Change National Team Lead in 2019. During her time as See Change Team Leader she successfully launched 8 Green Ribbon Launch events in addition to all the annual events outside the campaign which helped facilitate conversations nationally. She oversaw the expansion if the workplace and Mental Health Advocate programmes, 7 national pieces of research which were published in the See Change booklets and Green Ribbon reports, and she was responsible for development of annual strategy, objectives and funding applications.
Green Ribbon Campaign
Barbara was responsible for the delivery of the annual See Change Green Ribbon campaign, which aims to spread awareness about all mental health difficulties to help end mental health stigma and discrimination.
She successfully led the See Change team through 4 annual Green Ribbon campaigns, supporting hundreds of events at local level. The campaigns had different themes each year and focused on minority group engagement, discrimination, shame and judgement.
Read the full campaign reports by clicking on the images below
Make a Ripple Campaign
The 2012 Make a Ripple campaign was an online social marketing campaign to encourage members of the public to share their experiences of mental health problems, in order to build public awareness and understanding and challenge stigma and discrimination. Barbara was proud to speak to a large audience at the launch of this inaugural event, and contributed to the See Change website and social media content for the campaign.
Let’s not be ashamed to address the ‘Elephant in the Room’ anymore, and together we will start the conversation on mental health from the school room to the board room.
The Elephant In The Room Movement is an important visual conversation about mental health, and giving space to normalising conversations in every walk of life about our most difficult experiences.
We have associated shame, judgement, fear and negativity with our mental health for too long. It's time to take a big step forward and see the true value of our mental health: that it is all encompassing.
Barbara is delighted to support Brent Pope on his mission to change the world with his beautiful approach to easier conversations about mental health.