Run by staff with lived experience, Anchoring Minds helps military personnel and families navigate the challenges of service life by providing access to mental health support when needed. This includes signposting to support for people affected by deployment, access to free courses and resources to improve their wellbeing, or simply a friendly chat with someone who understands what they’re going through. Home visits by service leaders with lived experience is also available to those accessing Anchoring Minds in Hampshire.
As part of the extension, Solent Mind has also enhanced the service with a new series of videos exploring the emotional cycle of deployment and other wellbeing topics, as well as a free toolkit designed to help those about to experience deployment within their family - all are available on a new webpage that’s been created to make it even easier for military personnel and families to find the right support.
Living with a partner, child or parent in the Royal Navy or Royal Marines creates a unique set of challenges that can put pressure on a person’s mental health. With frequent moving, stress around deployment and loneliness to contend with, it’s not uncommon for military families to need some extra support. The same is true for military personnel, who also have to contend with many risks and challenges to their mental health.
“We want to ensure both serving personnel and their families know how and where to access that support when they need it. Anchoring Minds is integral to achieving this, so we’re incredibly pleased to be able to continue providing the service and helping people manage the challenges that can come with being part of a military family.
Caroline Payne, Service Manager at Solent Mind
We are proud to continue our support for Solent Mind and the ‘Anchoring Minds’ service, which has proven to be a vital lifeline for Royal Navy and Royal Marines families. Service life brings unique pressures and it’s essential that personnel and their loved ones have access to dedicated mental health support. By extending this partnership, we’re helping to ensure that no one in our naval community feels alone or unable to cope, no matter where they are in their journey.
Mandy Lindley, Director of Relationships and Funding at RNRMC
Yvette’s story
Mental Health Navigator and ex-military wife, Yvette, uses her own lived experience to help Solent Mind ensure military personnel and their families get the emotional wellbeing support they need and deserve. Read her story below.
My ex-partner was already part of the military when we married - something I supported despite not knowing much at all about what it entailed, and how it would impact me and our relationship.
When it happened, I was thrown in at the deep end. Almost immediately we moved away, and at the time I already had two children and was pregnant with our third.
Moving somewhere completely new to you can be inherently difficult, but it becomes even more so when you’re also raising three small children and you don’t have a core support network.
At times, I was lucky enough to be living nearby other military wives whose husbands went off at similar times to my own. I was able to build up friendships with these women - that was, however, until someone was posted and moved elsewhere.
I got better at dealing with the challenges that came with being a military wife over the 16 years I was with my ex-partner, but I never got used to them. It was lonely and isolating, and raising my children whilst moving frequently was stressful - all things that other military families sometimes contend with and need extra support for.
Through my experience, I became more resilient and self-sufficient. I learnt not to panic and to take things in my stride, but I would have loved to have had more support to help me manage my mental health at the time.
Mental health wasn’t something people talked about when I was a military wife. And, relatively simple things that would have been a huge support to have, such as a document describing the emotional cycle of deployment, didn’t exist.
Thankfully, that’s changing and there is now so much more support for military families and personnel than there was when I was a military wife. There’s also a lot less stigma around accessing it.
Anchoring Minds, for example, is Solent Mind’s emotional wellbeing service, ensuring Royal Navy and Royal Marine personnel and their families know how and where to access mental health support when they need it.
The service is run by people with lived experience, including myself. I cherish having the opportunity now to use my experience to help others navigate the challenges that come with being part of a military family and, importantly, feel more understood and less alone.
