Certitude pledge to Equally Well UK: 

At Certitude, we believe everyone has the right to a good life. We focus our support on helping people to define what a good life looks like to them and helping them to achieve it – this includes supporting people to improve and maintain their physical wellbeing.

People we support have told us they want to learn to cook healthy meals, want help exercising and want support around their substance use. We have established a  physical wellbeing steering group with an initial focus of:

  • Developing materials, details of online and local help for people we support and staff to use. This includes monthly health briefings for people to increase knowledge on a range of health conditions.
  • Developing a harm minimisation approach across our mental health services
  • Developing new opportunities for people to learn healthy cooking skills
  • Increasing people’s access to and confidence in using a range of exercise opportunities.
  • Defining our role in advocating for people’s physical wellbeing, access to healthcare and support.
Pledged 7 September 2018

Liz Durrant – Director of Mental Health at Certitude said: “At Certitude we believe everyone has the right to a good life and that means a life they live to a grand old age, filled with hope, opportunities and good mental and physical health. We are not comfortable with the current truth that having a mental health need puts you at risk of dying 15 – 20 years younger due to physical illness. We want people to feel able to access physical health support and to not have to rely on harmful coping mechanisms in response to their distress. Ultimately, we must create a system where we stop accepting people’s premature mortality as inevitable”