Burton and District Mind is the local specialised mental health charity for Tamworth, East Staffordshire and Lichfield District. We provide counselling services independently and on behalf of the NHS and work with local voluntary sector organisations and the Community Mental Health Team with our Future Focus service. We provide a mental health crisis café called Safe Haven in Market Street. We are affiliated with Mind, the largest mental health charity in England, and have been awarded the Mind Quality Mark accreditation, demonstrated our high quality of services. In 2024, we helped more than 3,500 people.
We recognise that having traits associated with neurodiversity (perhaps diagnosis such as Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia and Dyspraxia) can make life more challenging – this in turn can be a factor in the signs and symptoms of mental health problems. It also makes it more difficult to understand and communicate those problems.
A growing body of research is telling us that drama and performing arts are really helpful for people with mental health problems and for people with neurodiverse traits. Performing arts supports emotional wellbeing through expression, confidence through performance and reduces loneliness from helping people connect with people like them and building friendship. Our project brings together our mental health skills with Shoebox Theatre’s incredible participatory performance arts programme to help people with both mental health problems and neurodiverse traits.
Everyone deserves good mental health, together, we’ll get there.
