onlineBloggers have a final chance to take part in A Day in the Life, a project to bring everyday life lived with mental health difficulties into the spotlight, this week.

On August 26, people are being asked to write about what their day was like living with mental health difficulties. This is the final part of the year-long ‘A Day in the Life’ project, which aims to collect the everyday experiences of people who experience mental health difficulties. On four days across a year people who experience mental health difficulties are writing blogs that answer the question: ‘How was your day? What made your mental health worse and what made it better?’

The project is run by Social Spider, creators of The New Mental Health blog and former publishers of One in Four magazine, with the support of Public Health England. The idea behind it is that, while mental health is one of the greatest public policy challenges we face, policy is made based on the tiny bit of people’s lives seen by professionals. When it comes to treatment and support, there is little evidence on the realities of people’s lives.

It began in November 2014 when more than 370 people logged on to the A Day in the Life website and shared what their day was like lived with mental health difficulty. Hundreds of people shared their days on two more days in February and May. The final day people will be asked to write about is August 26.

Those who sign up will be invited to describe their day, and this can be done anonymously. It should be a personal story that answers the question: what makes life with a mental health difficulty worth living - and what makes it more difficult? 

“We’ve already published 375,000 words of mental health first person experience,” said Mark Brown, creator of the project. “Just people writing about what a particular day was like for them. For some people it was an average day of work. For others it was an awful day of struggle and worry.  Some people were in hospital. Some people were on holiday.  Everyone writing was showing the thing we don’t usually see around mental health: what everyday, average days are like for people living with mental health difficulty.  No one has done a project like this before.  We’ve proved that people will share loads of detail about what life is like if you treat reading their answers as a privilege.”

You can sign up at: http://dayinthelifemh.org.uk/