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Volunteering

At Bipolar Scotland our volunteers are at the core of everything we do. Whether that is facilitating one of our self-help groups; providing peer support; fundraising or using their media and design skills, for example. We are planning for new volunteer roles to become available in the near future too.

Put simply, without our amazing volunteers we wouldn’t exist!

A fundamental part of our plans and approach is to co-produce, with the help of our volunteers, what we do. This means listening to what our volunteers say, and then reflecting this in our actions.

Some of our employees started their journey with us as volunteers, and as you read below, you will see that building your skills, self-confidence, and experience, can also help you with finding employment.

What we can offer

We begin our relationship with an informal conversation. Find out a little more about us and we discuss with you what way you would like to be involved and an opportunity to ask questions.

We Offer

High quality induction training

A chance to gain experience and self-confidence

Ongoing training opportunities

References for future employment

The Mental Health Benefits of Volunteering

Giving something of yourself, and a little of your time, for another person’s benefit, is so good for your mental and physical wellbeing.

Volunteering makes you feel good, and the people you volunteer with too. We need to be, and to feel, useful.

Why is This?

It is because the drive and motivation to help each other is part of what we are and, as a species, evolution has etched this need to help into our psyches. We are, in effect, designed and born to help each other!

As human beings we inherently do things every day to help others, whether for our own families and children, friends or colleagues. In more recent times, families have become smaller and less extended, and closer knit tribal, and even village style, social communities are rarer than they once were. For our distant ancestors, helping one another was integral to their mutual survival, and the viability of their social groups.

Feeling, and being, useful feeds into all of this, and knowing that we are needed and part of something good and worthwhile, creates and reinforces our positive feelings too. When we do something positive, our bodies sense this is happening and they react positively to it, both psychologically and chemically.

Engaging with other people through volunteering also reduces social isolation, which has been shown to be detrimental to our health. It brings people and communities together.

The arrival of COVID 19, over the last two years, is a good example of all the above. Individuals kick started a sense of community, and communities responded wonderfully. We had it in us, and we always will.

Volunteer Stories

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WANT TO FIND OUT MORE?

On The Level, our bi-monthly e-magazine for people in Scotland living with bipolar, is packed full of articles, case studies, news and opportunities to take part in research. Why not sign up to receive it and join the caring, informed Bipolar Scotland community?

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