Tonic: surfing for mental health

Every now and again in our team we are lucky enough to meet up with our counterparts in other parts of Wales. Two weeks ago we travelled down to Carmarthen to the office of West Wales Action for Mental Health. We spent an enjoyable and extremely interesting day finding out about the many diverse and innovative projects the staff and volunteers are currently working on. Check out The Recovery Wall project on the organisation’s website, which is using digital media to promote recovery and wellbeing, and Mind Your Heart – a health promotion programme for people living with mental health problems…. not to mention the excellent work with veterans over the past couple of years, which should probably have a separate blog post all of its own – just keep watching this space!

And then there is Tonic – the surfing therapy project…. 

Shôn Devey, the Development Worker leading on Tonic, told us more. He started from a very personal viewpoint.

Ton is Welsh for wave. Staff here realised that they had this fantastic natural environment on their doorstep. Who doesn’t feel better when they go to the beach? Yet some people who live near a beach never go. I ride the waves for my own mental health and wellbeing. It was like a dream come true when Angie Darlington (the WWAMH director) asked me to develop this project.

Tonic was set up 4 years ago. People spend so much time in hideous rooms for their therapy sessions. We thought maybe they’d feel better for being in this great outdoor space. Add an activity as well and you have the extra health benefits of that. Put people into groups – and then you have social interaction. Isolation is a big problem for people locally.

At first people think – “I don’t think I can do this”. It’s a metaphor for other areas of their lives. But engaging with surfers is actually a cool activity. The moment participants enter the water they’re connected with the world’s oceans. It is like putting on a new skin (literally – in the form of a wetsuit). People are suddenly all equal – the teachers, volunteers, participants. We connect with marine mammals - there have been dolphins circling us in the water. Afterwards we’ve had participants volunteering to clean up the beach and engaging with the wider world. 

The programme is open to anyone with mental health problems, a carer of any kind, veterans, and those who’ve experience of substance misuse or alcohol addiction. The current age range is 11 – 72. We have a 72 year old woman who surfs through the winter along with a group of other women. They find that being tumbled and battered in the waves is good for their wellbeing. It’s a really constructive activity for carers and the cared for to take part in together. Children will come along with their parents because it’s “cool!”

All the kit is provided for the 6 week long programme which works out of beaches at Borth, Poppit and Newgale. Participants spend 2 hours in the water, with an hour preparing. So it’s an afternoon each week. Then afterwards we socialise together. We use a lot of volunteers in the water and have developed rigorous health and safety procedures. Volunteers help participants to see their success. Everyone has lots of fun. At the end of each course we have a BBQ and celebration.

People are “wide open” straight after the surfing session so there is a period when it is possible to work on things. We have links to surf therapy projects around the World. In South Africa, working with young people from the townships, after the surfing they run beach school and hold HIV/sexual health sessions. Ultimately we would like to offer a menu of options around engaging with the ocean environment, such as dolphin watching, footpath maintenance and beach clearing. 

This is our fourth season, and there has been a development pathway through the programme. Some participants go on to become project volunteers and then surf instructors. We have trained 12 instructors so far. But the project is not so much about the surfing as about spending time with people in the natural environment. And giving good care and attention to people is key.

It’s also important to help keep people in the water after the programme has finished. One of the volunteer surf teachers runs a Saturday club through the winter which anyone can join. And there is a virtual surf club on Facebook. We are also hoping to develop a physical space at Borth – more information coming soon!

WWAMH is working with Swansea University to evaluate the project. So far across a small sample of people it has been shown to have a significant effect upon people’s mental and physical wellbeing, to the extent that it sits alongside medication as a valid option. Some participants come off a hospital ward, they may be “zombied”, or over-medicated – and then they “wake up” with the first woosh of a wave. It is absolutely incredible. People talk about their new “healthy” addiction.

After tumbling in the waves one of the participants said: “I was brainwashed! I came and my mind was all crumpled and full of anxiety. It was as though someone took my brain out, cleaned it and put it back in my head.”

Tonic has been highly commended in the NHS Awards and is now beginning to be accepted as mainstream, with a 2 year service level agreement being set up with the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) team. The project is also in the process of being established as an independent charity with a board of trustees. Future development opportunities include weekend packages for groups – a sort of mental health tourism. Suddenly people really want to be a part of it!

Powys meets West Wales!

Back row: WWAMH - Lewis Phillips - IT Officer, Shon Devey & Charles Macmillan - Development Officers. 

Our team - Freda Lacey (Participation Officer), Jane Cooke (Interim Senior Officer Mental Health), Jackie Newey (Projects Officer) & Glynis Luke (Admin, Information & Communications Officer).

Front row: WWAMH - Marie Wright & Tim Teeling - Development Officers, Angie Darlington - Director, 

Jan Batty - Mind Your Heart programme Development Officer.

Shôn’s enthusiasm for the project is infectious. We all agreed it is an absolutely brilliant project, and wish we had the seaside here in Powys (though Borth is not that far away for some of us)! What kind of physical activity project would you be interested in here? Let us know.

When was the last time you really listened?

Last week I went on an audio editing training session with StoryWorks. We learnt how to carry out 10 minute recorded interviews with people, transfer them to computer, and then edit them down to 3 minutes to provide a succinct but memorable digital story which could potentially be uploaded to a website or blog post as a podcast. The training was great – the day flew by – and at the end I left feeling really inspired – with a new skill to add to my toolkit (need to practice more though, once colleagues have bought the kit) – which could, in the future, be of real value to the team and those wishing to tell their stories.

The session also prompted me to think more about listening skills. I have had some training around this in the past, including on the Mental Health First Aid course. I shall always remember the frustration I experienced when sitting telling the amazing story of my other life as a Heritage Seed Library guardian, only to find that the so-called listener was sitting cross-legged, facing in another direction completely, and apparently staring out of the window!

Despite the training, I am incredibly bad at listening properly most of the time. Whether I'm at work, and a colleague wants to talk to me while I’m writing a long and complex email, or I’m at home and family ask me to listen about work stresses, for example, and I would rather, at that moment, just relax and chill out. 

It’s hard – this listening thing! And that’s even before we bring some serious emotional distress into the equation. When we are mentally distressed, one of the first things we often feel a great need to do is talk to someone else. The very act of talking and being genuinely listened to seems to help a great deal.

There are some excellent guidelines out there. You can read about the value of listening skills for mental health nurses in a piece called “Core communication skills in mental health nursing”:
“...many mental health nurses believe they are not doing anything when they are just listening and as a result they underestimate the value of simply listening and more importantly its therapeutic effect.”

And closer to home, the DIY Futures lottery-funded project has recently been holding Listening Skills workshops as part of its Stories Project. Individuals have volunteered to tell their stories of mental distress, whilst others have volunteered to listen. Project Manager, Jane Cook, has been telling me about the workshops which have been really well received. The project sourced useful guidelines from world-wide, including this piece about listening from the Bloemfontein Samaritans in South Africa and a useful online presentation about the Process of listening.  By October there will be a book of DIY Futures stories available – the culmination of all this storytelling and listening that is currently happening - we’ll let you know more nearer the time.

Perhaps if we all listened that little bit more carefully on a regular basis (listening rather than just hearing) then others would gain the benefits of sharing their story/distress. And even if they felt just a tiny bit less distressed as a result – what an impact that might have overall.

What do you think? Do you have any experiences of good and bad listening to share with us?