Today (10th May) is the start of Mental Health Awareness Week.

We are raising awareness of basic income and how it could help people look after their mental health with an open letter.

Can you help us by adding your name to our video letter to mental health ministers in the UK?

This week we're likely to hear celebrities and organisations giving us advice on how to look after our mental health. But our approach to mental health so often puts the blame and the responsibility on the individual, rather than trying to fix our systems and find solutions as a society.

We believe one of these solutions is a basic income.

There isn't anywhere near enough discussion about the links between mental health and income. That's what we're trying to change this week.

We led the Peace of Mind project with Basic Income Network Scotland. It brought together people who have lived experience of mental illness and using the benefits system as well as people who have received a basic income as part of a pilot to explore basic income.

Throughout the project we kept asking ourselves:

How are we supposed to look after our mental health when we don’t have any money?

And, how can we think about earning money when we are struggling with our mental health?

A basic income would ensure we all have access to at least some income, regardless of what else is going on in our lives. Pilots have shown over and over again that it can improve mental health and well-being.

Basic income should now be seriously considered as a preventative mental health measure.

This Mental Health Awareness Week we want to see the ministers responsible for mental health in the UK consider the role a basic income could play.

We want mental health charities to start looking at basic income and talking to their teams and service users about it to discuss how it might work for them.

Participants ​in the Peace of Mind project have created a video letter calling on policy makers, mental health charities and politicians to join us in taking basic income from idea to reality.

Will you join them by co-signing the letter?

We're aiming to gather thousands of signatures to send politicians and mental health charities a powerful message that with a basic income we can get closer to true peace of mind..