Suffolk’s award winning ‘Respect for dementia’ campaign is launching subtitled versions of its anti-stigma video to promote equality during Dementia Awareness Week 2011 3 – 9 July.

‘Respect for dementia’, a campaign by Suffolk Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, produced anti-stigma materials promoting awareness of dementia, including a video launched during Dementia Awareness Week 2010.

The video, which explores how dementia affects the person diagnosed and their loved ones, in being re-launched in three subtitled languages: Bengali, Chinese and Polish.

The Trust funded the translations of the video using money awarded from NHS East of England’s 2010 Innovation Awards for its ‘Respect for dementia’ campaign, which it also used to create translated bookmarks.

Gabriel Tamaya, project lead for ‘Respect for dementia’, said: “We were awarded prize money of £2000 for tackling inequalities in healthcare. We decided to invest this money back into the community and reduce the stigma surrounding the condition by promoting information and services to some of Suffolk’s biggest ethnic minority groups.”

The film re-launch supports the theme for Dementia Awareness Week – ‘Remember the person’ – which is about looking beyond someone’s dementia diagnosis, and remembering that they are still a person.

The subtitled videos are available to watch on the campaign website: www.ifyouknew.co.uk.

Suffolk Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust works in partnership to provide mental health services to people in the county of Suffolk, with the exclusion of Waveney, and in the town of Thetford in Norfolk. It also provides an alcohol treatment service and learning disability services to the county of Suffolk.

Its website is at www.smhp.nhs.uk. For a full breakdown of services and financial performance, see the Trust’s annual report online under ‘Information>Reports’