 In this video I'm gonna share just a few tips about how to stay well if you're worried about your mental health during the coronavirus outbreak and these are generally applicable ideas that you can use for yourself or someone that you're concerned about and they are mainly good for kids, adults, anyone. So the first thing is routine. One of the things that is likely to happen as things stop running, if you're in a country with school closures or perhaps you've been asked to work from home, is that the normal things that we do each day aren't happening in quite the way that they normally would. Now we know about issues like anxiety and depression. That routine is one of the things that really helps to keep them at bay. Getting up, getting out, talking to people, doing the same things each day can be really helpful and protect us from anxiety and depression. If we're going to be staying at home, self- isolating, working from home then that routine might fall by the wayside. So we need to create new routine and as part of that new routine be thinking also about yourself care. So I'd be thinking about things like looking after yourself, getting up, getting clean, getting dressed even if you're not going to leave the house. I would also be thinking about food and diet and trying to get a somewhat balanced diet. They're appreciating that if this goes on for a long time then our options might become more limited and to be forgiving of ourselves for that and then also to think about sleep as well. Sleep is really important. So exercising good self-care. The other thing I just include within that kind of routine and self-care thing is if you are somebody who takes medication think early that you're able to make sure that your stock of that medication won't be interrupted. So plan ahead for that one. The next thing that I would think that you need to really think carefully about to keep yourselves well particularly if we end up going more into self-isolation and doing more social distancing is considering how to stay connected with people. We're really lucky that we live in a world where we can be hyper connected even at a time where we might all be confined to home. So think about how you can strengthen some of your connections online and whether you can be using things like WhatsApp or social media for example to be reaching out to people so that you do not feel completely isolated even if you are having to physically isolate. You might be someone who doesn't usually use social media so much or the online technologies this might be a really great time to learn. My next suggestion is that we need to take time out from the worry so it's a really difficult time but one of the things that we're seeing is people constantly refreshing their newsfeed and always looking for more information about the coronavirus and how many people are affected how many deaths are being what's going to happen next and it's a constant source of worry and that's a really difficult thing to deal with so actually if every now and then you're able to say to yourself I'm going to stop refreshing I'm going to allow myself to think about something completely different and try and find something that you can do mindfully and really lose yourself in that task instead. I would encourage you if you can actually to turn off your devices and to unhook yourself from kind of news sources and so on and actually just get lost in something that you know that you can enjoy for a few moments just give yourself a chance to reset a little bit. Of course we want to know what's going to happen but this constant refreshing constant checking constant worrying is something that can really really build our anxiety and feed into kind of low mood and worry and things as well so giving yourself time off from the worry really really helpful. Next we can look to kind of somewhat control our fears our worries and our concerns using the if then strategy that I've talked about in other videos and this is actually by kind of getting all our worries out writing them all down making a list of them and then thinking for each of those worries in turn well if this happens then what will I do thinking which of the things that we can control thinking which of the things that we might need to accept that we perhaps can't control and actually trying to understand which of those are real risks or not. It's really difficult times and who knows exactly what's going to happen but we can be thinking carefully about what are the things I can do something about. We've all got lots of if then's going around in our head but remember if you can catch it and name it then you're in a position to potentially tame it so name those worries and consider if this does happen then what will I do next. Finally I would encourage you to think if you can be on the here and now and try to make some positive plans for the future we don't know exactly how long this is going to go on for we don't exactly know what the consequences are going to be but if we get very lost in the difficulties that we're facing right now or the challenges that we might be facing in the coming weeks then we're more likely to get very bogged down by it to feel very stressed very anxious very low as a result. It might be really nice to think about things that you might do in six months time or a years time plan for the future remember that there will be a time beyond this and think about the things that you might enjoy then. I hope this helps a little bit I don't have all the answers we're having to learn together here if you've got ideas things that are working for you for your loved ones for those that you're caring for or supporting do leave them in a comment down below and if it's helpful for me to create other videos let me know what questions you have let me know what would be helpful and I'll do my very best to support in any way that I can. Until next time bye