“The lockdown is starting to get to me. I don’t know if I can handle much more of being cooped up at home. What can I do to help myself cope?”

For many of us, there’s a lot going on at the moment that is stressful. We may have kids at home, be cooped up in a small home or have lost our job. Just the conditions of lockdown themselves, making it impossible to see our friends or family, are enough to cause real mental strain. But there are things we can do to ease the stress. Here are a few of the resources available to keep ourselves going.

Take a moment
Sometimes just taking a few moments to quietly sit and focus can do wonders. Meditation goes back thousands of years, and although it can seem hard to believe it makes a real difference, there is lots of science to back up the fact it can. Calm is a website offering short guided meditations and during the coronavirus lockdown, it has made lots of resources free. Have a look at their site and give one of their guided meditations a go. Most are only about ten minutes long. Click here.

Talk
Each local council has set up a community hub to help people through this crisis. They bring together support agencies offering all types of help, from housing, money and work to domestic abuse and mental health. They’re not always well-advertised for fear of being over-subscribed by search on the local council website for ‘coronavirus’ and the number to call should come up. Someone there will be able to offer a shoulder to lean on.

The Samaritans offer free support and the chance to talk to someone if things are getting on top of us. As well as their phonelines and offering email support, they also have loads of really helpful info on their website. Everything from dealing with working from home to worrying about our friends or relatives is covered. It’s well worth a browse.

Email Samaritans: jo@samaritans.org
Call Samaritans (free and 24 hours): 116 123

Tips
The BBC have put together some tips on protecting our mental health during lockdown. With info about limiting the amount of news we watch, to staying in touch with loved ones, it’s a good, quick guide full of useful info.

The Mental Health foundation has some more in-depth info on looking after ourselves in a time of crisis. As well as info on everything from talking to kids about coronavirus to avoiding dodgy news sources, the site also has loads of links to other sites offering good info and advice.

Quids in! (of course)
Have a browse of the Quids in! website for a host of general tips on looking after our mental health. (Don’t forget money worries are also a source of stress, so our whole site can help with this.) Our own research has shown that, even in more normal times, lots of us struggle with our mental health. The important thing to remember is that help is out there, and there are also steps we can take to help ourselves. Have a look at some of our top tips.

For more info about wellbeing during the coronavirus crisis, have a look at the list of questions and answers on Corona-Finance section of the Quids in! magazine website here.

If you have a question that you can’t find the answer to on our site, you can ask us yourself by using the Corona-Finance Enquiry Form on the site.