The UK is experiencing a quiet, unreported epidemic. Stress and depression look set to double in a generation

mental ill-health already costs the country around £77bn a year, and psychological and emotional health issues lie at the root of some of our most intractable social problems, from alcoholism and obesity to long-term unemployment, violent crime and consumer debt. So why are we not doing more to address this situation, or educating the public about what they can do to look after themselves? Perhaps the answer lies in how we think and talk about mental health. Even the term has become associated primarily with illness, something that happens to other people, and that we hope won't happen to us. We try not to think about it, and leave the experts to fix us if something goes wrong. We all have mental health, and actually, we can all do simple things to maintain it. Recent studies suggests that around 40% of our mental wellbeing is down to our outlook and activities: the choices we make, the actions we take. Just as in physical health, expert care can be complemented by individual action. We can brush our teeth, try to get our five-a-day, but what about our minds? I started Mindapples to encourage people to think positively about the health of their minds. I wanted to create a campaign that did for mental health what the five-a-day campaign has done for physical health: to make taking care of our minds a normal, natural thing for all of us. The idea came out of conversations with my best friend Jo. I've had periods of stress and "burn-out" in my life, and Jo herself was diagnosed with bipolar disorder several years ago. We talked frequently about how we were managing our minds, and she taught me a lot about how to take better care of myself. Yet when we looked around the mental health sector, there didn't seem to be any conversation in which we could participate as equals. She was placed on one side of the diagnosis line, a patient in need of care, and I on the other, in need of "sorting myself out". So I started Mindapples, initially as an online campaign in 2008 to crowdsource the answer to the question: "what's the five-a-day for your mind?" Four years on, we're offering services to train business leaders to manage their minds and educate the public about how to take better care of their mental health. Borrowing the five-a-day concept has been incredibly useful for us in communicating the positive, practical side of mental health, but just as important has been that we don't tell people what to do. Few public health campaigns include a space for people to reflect and share their own knowledge, and public health has a bad reputation for telling people how to live. That doesn't work for mental health. It's too personal, and in any case the evidence suggests taking prescribed actions to boost our wellbeing doesn't really work. Part of our success comes from taking an educational approach, focusing less on trying to change behaviour and more on increasing awareness and understanding. We already teach people about germs, plaque, tar and cholesterol, but mental health is decades behind. We don't understand what's happening to us, so we're scared to talk about it, and we don't know what positive actions we can take to remedy it. As neuroscience and psychology reveal more about how our minds work, we think huge progress can be made through basic mental health literacy training. For me personally, Mindapples has been a process of learning how to manage my own mental health. The first 'mindapple' I discovered was playing the piano: I found the complexity and emotional depth incredibly helpful when I felt sad or depressed. I'm not much of a pianist, but it doesn't matter: when I play, I feel better. Four years on, I work my mindapples into my daily routine. I walk between meetings, listening to music; I try to make time to talk to close friends; I work hard doing something useful for others; and I also try not to be too hard on myself. For me the most important mindapple is to give in to temptation at least once a day. After all, mental health should be fun, right? We've gathered over 50,000 'mindapple' suggestions already, but we want everyone in the UK to take an interest in what they can do to take care of their minds. When we consider the wider economic and social benefits of everyone managing their mental health, taking care of our minds is actually a massive opportunity, for businesses and for society. That's why, at Mindapples, we aim to make looking after our minds as natural as brushing our teeth.