Protect the Mind - funded support sessions for activists

Can we help? Sessions funded by Protect the Wild and absolutely confidential.

Protect the Wild has always been incredibly proud to help support monitor and sab groups with equipment and to give these courageous and dedicated frontline animal activists a platform to promote their work.

But for some time it’s felt to us like only half the story: what could we be doing to help support the individuals themselves?

In December 2024, we announced a new initiative that we called ‘Protect the Mind’.

Protect the Mind - support for activists

A few months back Rob (Pownall, our CEO) was at a vegan conference where a seminar on mental health was held. It was hosted by Dr. Ishani Rao, an NHS GP and urgent care doctor specialising in climate change, plant-based lifestyle medicine and mental health. Ishani achieved her medical degree and BSc in Women’s Health from King’s College London and is currently taking a Masters in global health policy with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Ishani says that her passions are animal rights, activists’ mental health, and protecting the environment.

Rob wrote to Ishani outlining an idea we’d had which would mean Protect the Wild offering activists mental health support, and asking her if she’d like to be involved. We were extremely grateful that she immediately saw the potential, understood exactly what we hoped to do, and jumped straight in!

Within a few weeks Dr Rao had recorded four fifteen-minute videos which are permanently available on the Protect the Wild website with a list of resources.

But of course even then we planned to do more…

Photo by Mārtiņš Zemlickis on Unsplash

Individual support sessions - paid for by Protect the Wild

It’s now March, and - thankfully - another hunting ‘season’ is drawing to a close.

This ‘season’ has been an incredibly brutal one for monitors and sabs though. Hunts are feeling the pressures of constant surveillance and a government promising to end so-called ‘trail hunting’. They are lashing out, increasingly violent, and seem hellbent on killing as many animals as possible before they are finally banned for good.

We know that activists have suffered. Many are literally battered and bruised. People need help and support.

We also know that finding support can be difficult, and sessions can be expensive. We want to help with both those potential obstacles. And while help with your mental health support may not seem an immediate concern right now, we all know how negative experiences can build and weigh us down over time.

Whether it is this week, next month, or even later this summer - when you need help you can now book two hours of FREE sessions with Dr Ishani PER MONTH (that could be 4 x 30 min sessions or 2 x 1 hour sessions) over a period of six months. In other words, that’s up to twelve hours of free counselling.

• And these sessions will be fully funded by Protect the Wild.

Confidential from end-to-end

These sessions are designed to provide a confidential safe space to discuss what you’re going through, explore ways to support your mental health, and, if necessary, be referred to other mental health professionals who understand activism-related stress and trauma.

• At no stage will any of the team at Protect the Wild know who has contacted Ishani or why.

• You deal exclusively with Ishani.

• Ishani will invoice us directly for the sessions but your name will not be disclosed or shared.

While we can’t possibly wrap our arms around everyone who has been affected by the things they’ve seen in the last few months, we will do our best to help as many activists as we can.

So, once again, these one-on-one sessions are FREE to you, they are confidential, and Ishani is available right now.

• To schedule a 30-minute or 60-minute call, email mental.health.with.ishani@gmail.com or fill out the contact form on the Protect the Mind page on our website and that will go straight to Dr Ishani.

• If you have any questions or comments please email us at contact@protectthewild.org.uk (Please note that Protect the Wild is not a counselling service and we are not qualified to answer queries about mental health issues ourselves.)