Green Ribbon Campaign 2025 - Where to from Here?

Green Ribbon Campaign 2025 - Where to from Here?

Always at this time of year, as the Green Ribbon Campaign draws to a close, in Shine we take time to reflect on its effectiveness, what worked well and what can be improved upon in working to achieve our aim of reducing stigma around mental illness.

We are proud of the success of this year’s campaign, of having increased awareness, social contact and engagement and achieved significant growth in support and campaign recognition.  

It is in considering the all-important question ‘Where to from Here’ with our Green Ribbon Campaign that we look to the social contact element. The campaign has been hugely successful in raising awareness of the stigma that surrounds mental health. But awareness-raising is not enough. It does not, on its own, change attitudes and reduce mental health stigma.  

The Lancet Commission produced a review in 2022 on Ending Stigma and Discrimination in Mental Health. Over 40 researchers and people with lived experience of mental health conditions combined to produce the umbrella review of 216 systematic reviews, summarising the best available evidence on what it takes to reduce stigma and discrimination.

Their conclusion was that the best way to reduce stigma and prejudice is through social contact, that is, through interactions between people with lived experience of mental illness and those without mental health challenges.  

As an organisation, Shine has always put the voice of lived experience at the centre of everything we do. On the 15th of October, I had the privilege of representing Shine at the first-ever National Lived Experience Awareness Day, hosted by the HSE and Department of Health. It was a landmark moment for our sector and one that truly reflected the values we live by every day at Shine. The day celebrated the unique wisdom that comes from lived experience: the kind of knowledge that can’t be taught, only lived. It’s the insight people gain through navigating significant life challenges, and it’s what makes our work in recovery, family support, advocacy, and education so powerful and authentic.

Shine’s leadership and commitment to lived experience were recognised nationally. Our Reference Group for Sharing the Vision was highlighted as an example of best practice, a model for how to meaningfully include lived experience in national mental health policy. It was wonderful to see our structured, supported approach and the value of participation being held up as a model for others to follow. We also heard calls to action that echo so much of what we already do: to create spaces where people with lived experience can influence decisions, shape services, and lead change. Through our Voice Platform, Ambassador Programme, and the work we do every day in our groups, key-working, and campaigns, Shine is already living this vision.

In recent Green Ribbon campaigns, we have increased our focus and concentrated more on the all-important social contact element. Our ambassadors have been a key part of Green Ribbon Campaigns in 2024 and 2025. We have seen how strongly it resonates when our ambassadors;  people just like us, with jobs, families, hobbies and interests, hopes and dreams, share their experiences of living with a mental health condition, openly and honestly. Share their recovery journeys that, while not always linear, give hope to others.  

Ambassadors gave 34 in-person and online talks during this year’s campaign, wrote or participated in 10 different media articles about their lived experience of stigma and their recovery journeys in print, broadcast, social media and podcasts.  

Ambassadors also joined our staff and volunteer group at Longitude Festival, our Green Ribbon online launch, Electric Picnic, GPO ‘Meet and Greet’ coffee morning, the National Ploughing Championships and ‘Meet and Greet’ events at Connolly and Heuston stations. Their participation in, and contribution to, our series of Green Ribbon ‘Reframing Mental Illness- Challenging Stigma’ webinars was of considerable value in bringing the voice of lived experience to the target groups for these webinars including the Health and Social Care sector, the Workplace, the Traveller Community and Third Level Education.  

In our webinar for the Health and Social Care Sector, panellist Dr. Jim Lucey, Inspector of Mental Health Servies at the Mental Health Commission, mentioned the huge change that has been brought about in mental health care, of its move into a more human rights-based model. He warned however that this needs to be matched by a cultural shift in attitudes and prejudices. That’s where our work comes in.

Shine’s Green Ribbon Campaign does not finish at the end of September but rather continues throughout the year. So too does our thinking. We know that social contact is the way forward. It is the direction we will increasingly take our Green Ribbon Campaign into the future, in answer to that ‘Where to from here?’ question.