Resources
Here are some links and resources about managing mental health and wellbeing, and planning for and working towards social connection.
New Zealand Resources
The “Five Ways to Wellbeing” recommended by the Mental Health Foundation are: Connect, Give, Take Notice, Keep Learning, and Be Active. Learn how to put these into practice here.
The Five Ways to Wellbeing at Work Toolkit is a stepped guide to improving mental wellness in your workplace. It includes fact sheets, tips, tools and templates to make it easy for you to support your teams to build the Five Ways into their daily lives.
Lifekeepers is suicide prevention training programme designed for New Zealand communities. It is available nationwide and free of charge, to New Zealanders who are 18 years and over, and who are likely to interact with people at risk of suicide.
The Hono Mai website has information and resources to help you plan to remain socially connected in later life.
Arts Access Aotearoa works in partnership to increase access to the arts for people in Aotearoa who experience barriers to participation.
Essentially Men offers programmes and resources to connect and inspire men of all ages.
The Creative New Zealand website includes an online toolkit with best practice guidelines and resources to assist with the development of community arts initiatives in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The Loneliness New Zealand website offers information and support.
The Mindfit NZ website has a directory of NZ services to support mental wellbeing, as well as practical mental fitness tips.
Australian Resources
The Global Centre for Modern Ageing has launched a new online portal with information and resources on Covid-19, general health and well-being, and social connection. The resources are aimed at older Australians, but much of the information is relevant to non-Australians and other age groups. We particularly recommend Be Connected, an Australian government resource for people wanting to get online and safely increase their digital skills.
UK Resources
Connect and thrive: a guide to combating loneliness and connecting with others is a practical, evidence-based resource published in 2023, and provides information to increase understanding of loneliness, and strategies to help individuals to overcome it.
The Psychology of Loneliness report launched in July 2020 by the UK Campaign to End Loneliness offers insights relevant to public campaigning, group activities, or one-to-one psychological interventions aimed at tackling loneliness. Age UK has published a guide for practitioners and agencies running groups for older men.
The UK Joseph Rowntree Foundation published the “Loneliness Resource Kit”, 2013 sharing the process and learning from a large-scale community action research project aimed to identify and generate actions to reduce loneliness
The UK Campaign to End Loneliness report “Promising Approaches to reducing loneliness and isolation” provides a useful framework to understand and categorize different types of loneliness intervention, with case studies to illustrate each type.