Daring to Dream, the Emotional Health Charity, makes spaces to talk.
We all respond emotionally as well as physically to illness, although the need to address our emotional responses is frequently overlooked.
The most helpful approach for all of us to deal well with illness is a combination of good clinical care together with good emotional health.
Emotional health is simply about being able to label and speak about our feelings. The more we do that, the more we deal with them.
Good emotional health:
- Enhances the quality of life when living with physical illness and
- Is a buffer to developing a mental illness on top of the physical illness.
Daring to Dream’s ‘Spaces to Talk’
One by one, we are creating physical ‘spaces to talk’ in hospitals: non-clinical ‘safe spaces’ in Quiet Rooms, Relatives’ Rooms, and Dayrooms within the ward area that provide essential private space for patients, their families, and staff to have important conversations during vulnerable times. Our rooms offer a ‘safe space’ to share feelings, offer comfort, and to hear and discuss clinical advice.
Clinical conversations with the ‘person rather than a patient’
In our video clip below, Dr Nav Masani, Clinical Lead Trustee for Daring to Dream, talks to Siân Lloyd, about medical staff embracing Daring to Dream’s focus on emotional support as well as clinical care.
He hopes that by clinical conversations being in a non-clinical space, such as one of the charity’s ‘Spaces to Talk’ then it will help change the conversation.
Nav hopes that, when needed, their clinical conversations do indeed move into being with ‘a person, rather than a patient’ – and become a holistic conversation that supports that person’s emotional wellbeing. as well as their clinical care.
A clinical conversation is another kind of ‘Space to Talk’.
In our video below, Nav discusses the benefits for clinical conversations with ‘the person rather than a patient’
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