Friends Life to headline sponsor Mind Media Awards 2012

Posted Monday 20 August 2012

The awards, to be held at The BFI on Monday 19 November 2012, honours the very best media portrayals and reporting of mental health problems across broadcast, print and digital media, and will be hosted by Mind President, Stephen Fry.

Now in their nineteenth year, the awards will be known as the Mind Media Awards 2012 sponsored by Friends Life. Last year’s winners included X Factor judge Tulisa for her BBC Three documentary Tulisa: My mum and me, a BBC Radio 5 Live documentary on the suicide of German goalkeeper Robert Enke and the long-running BBC 1 drama Casualty.

Andy Briggs, Chief Executive of Friends Life, said:

Friends Life is delighted to be supporting this year’s Mind Media Awards. We have worked with Mind in our Corporate Benefits business for a few years now and are very pleased to be sponsoring this important event.  We believe employers should be striving to provide a work environment, policies and practices, and most importantly an attitude, that supports people with mental health issues to help them stay in work or return to work.
Work is recognised as being beneficial to most people’s mental health and the efforts of the nominees and winners of these awards all contribute towards removing the stigma that persists around mental health.

We applaud all the entrants for their contributions to the debate and the understanding of mental health in the UK and look forward to celebrating the award winners’ work and achievements.

Paul Farmer, Chief Executive of Mind, said:

I am delighted that Friends Life will be sponsoring this year’s Mind Media Awards. Their support and commitment will help us to champion better reporting and portrayals of mental health problems in the media. By shining a light on good practice, this event is helping to improve the standard of representation across the media spectrum.

Event host Stephen Fry said:

As Mind’s President I’m thrilled to be hosting this year’s Mind Media Awards 2012, sponsored by Friends Life. The media, in all its glorious incarnations, has enormous power to influence people’s perceptions of mental health, not least in being able to challenge the stigma that sadly still surrounds it.

The Mind Media Awards is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate those actors, writers, programme makers, journalists and bloggers who are helping to dispel the myths around mental health and reduce discrimination.

Also supporting the Mind Media Awards 2012 sponsored by Friends Life are Euro RSCG London (Making a Difference award), Samaritans (News and Current Affairs), Comic Relief (Speaking Out award) and AXA PPP Healthcare who will sponsor the Journalist of the Year category. The New Media Award will be presented in memory of Mark Hanson.

Head to our webpage for details about remaining sponsorship packages.

You can also join the conversation on Twitter  @MindCharity using the hashtag #mindawards.

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