Someone you work with is probably having a harder week than they’re letting on. Not dramatically. Just quietly, in the background, getting through it.
That’s the thing about mental health. It rarely announces itself. It shows up as tiredness, a shorter fuse, a colleague going quiet on a team call, a friend cancelling plans again. Most of the time, we miss it.
Which is why a week like this still matters.
Mental Health Awareness Week runs from 11th to 17th May 2026, and it remains one of the UK’s most high profile public health campaigns. It’s a chance to talk more openly about wellbeing, challenge the stigma around mental ill health, and think about the small, practical things we can do for the people around us.
At Acorn, we wanted to mark it properly. Not with a poster or a hashtag, but with a few honest words about why it matters to us as a team.
Mental Health Awareness a conversation the country needs to keep having
The numbers are difficult to ignore. Around one in five adults in the UK live with a common mental health condition such as anxiety or depression. That’s a large part of the population carrying something most people will never see.
Among 16 to 24 year olds, the rates are higher still. A generation entering work, study and adult life is doing so under real pressure, and it’s changing how we all need to think about wellbeing at every stage of a career.
Then there’s the workplace picture. Poor mental health is one of the biggest drivers of absence in the UK, with millions of working days lost every year. Behind every one of those days is a person, a family, and a team adjusting around an empty chair.
But statistics only tell part of the story.
Most of us will know, love, work alongside or care for someone affected by poor mental health at some point. It might be a parent. A partner. A teenager. A colleague we’ve sat next to for years. This isn’t a niche issue. It reaches almost everyone eventually.
That’s why the conversation has to keep going, even when it feels like it’s been said before.
Why this matters to us at Acorn
We’re an asbestos consultancy. Our work is technical, often pressured, and frequently involves people dealing with difficult situations on their own sites. The job asks a lot of our team, and we don’t take that lightly.
At Acorn, we treat mental health with the same seriousness as physical health. That isn’t a slogan on a wall. It’s a working principle. If someone wouldn’t come in with a heavy cold, they shouldn’t feel they have to push through a week where their head isn’t in the right place either.
Looking after each other is part of how we operate. It always has been.
We’re a relatively small team, and that has its advantages. You notice when someone is quieter than usual. You notice when a normally chatty colleague stops joining the morning catch-up. Those small signals matter, and we try to act on them rather than brush them aside.
None of this is complicated. It’s about treating people as people. Asking how someone is and meaning it. Making it clear that taking a proper lunch break, switching off at the end of the day, or asking for support isn’t a weakness. It’s how a healthy team works.
We don’t always get it right. No workplace does. But we try to keep the door open, and we try to lead with kindness when it counts.
The small things that make the difference
When people talk about workplace wellbeing, the conversation often jumps straight to policies, programmes and platforms. Those things have their place. But culture isn’t built in a policy document. It’s built in the everyday.
It’s the quick message to a colleague who seemed off in a meeting. The willingness to say, “How are you, really?” and then actually wait for the answer. The decision to listen without rushing to fix it.
That last one is harder than it sounds.
When someone opens up about a tough time, the instinct is to offer solutions. To suggest things they could try. To make it better. Often, the most useful thing is the quietest one: being there, paying attention, and letting them speak without interruption.
Recharging matters too. Taking the holiday you’ve booked. Stepping away from the inbox in the evening. Going for a walk at lunch instead of eating at the desk. These aren’t indulgences. They’re how people stay well enough to do good work over the long haul.
And checking in goes both ways. Managers checking in with their teams, yes, but also colleagues looking out for each other during the day. A two-minute conversation in the kitchen can mean more than any formal review.
Small actions, repeated, become a culture. That’s really all it is.
Breaking the stigma, one conversation at a time
For all the progress we’ve made as a country, talking about mental health can still feel awkward. People worry about being judged. About being seen as not coping. About what it might mean for their job, their reputation, their relationships.
Those fears don’t disappear because there’s a campaign on for a week in May. But weeks like this can help. They give people permission to start the conversation. They make it slightly easier to say the thing that’s been sitting at the back of someone’s mind for months.
Stigma fades when openness becomes ordinary. When a colleague mentioning they’re seeing a therapist gets the same response as someone mentioning they’re seeing a physio. When taking a mental health day is treated with the same understanding as taking a sick day for the flu.
We’re not there yet, as a country or as workplaces. But we’re closer than we were, and that’s because of the conversations people have been brave enough to have.
Openness is a strength. It always has been. It takes more courage to say “I’m struggling” than to pretend everything is fine, and the people who do it are quietly making things easier for everyone who comes after them.
If there’s one thing we’d hope for from this week, it’s that a few more of those conversations happen. At work. At home. In the car on the way somewhere. Wherever they need to.
None of us has to have the perfect words. We just have to be willing to listen.
Because in the end, the things that hold people up aren’t grand gestures or expensive programmes. They’re the small, human moments. A message at the right time. A colleague who notices. A culture where it’s safe to say you’re not okay.
That’s what we’re trying to build at Acorn. Not perfectly, not always, but honestly. And we think it’s worth saying so.
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