Hearts & Minds Support Group

A self-help group that helps patients and carers face the future

Next meeting: 7 May 2025 - Tony Moore will be giving a presentation about his work at The Guardian.


  • Meeting Venue: Steeple View Memorial Hall, Willowfields, Laindon, Basildon, Essex, SS15 4EQ
  • Our meetings are held on the first Wednesday of the month


Hearts & Minds' Objectives

  1. To increase awareness of heart disease, its causes, treatments, implications and help available.
  2. To provide social and personal contact with people who share and understand their needs and problems.
  3. To liaise with existing groups, organizations and institutions in this and related fields.
  4. To promote and provide support on aftercare for patients, partners, and carers when resuming home and social life.

Hearts & Minds is a self-funding and voluntary group, which has been started by people with heart problems so that they can offer support and information to others in the Basildon & District area who are suffering from heart problems. These problems include angina, heart attack and other heart related problems.

As heart disease has a tremendous impact on an individual’s whole family, Hearts & Minds objectives encompass those who care for the sufferer too. Someone who has experienced problems with their heart is undoubtedly in a good position to offer comfort and hope to those who are suffering from heart related illnesses and Hearts Minds have members who can be contacted by anyone needing help to come to terms with their illness.

 

There are many fears and worries experienced by people with heart disease and heart related illnesses. Sharing these with others helps to lessen the load. Hearts & Minds hold regular meetings where members can share problems and experiences.

 

We have speakers who give interesting and informative talks related not only to heart disease but on a number of topical and social subjects. Membership of the group is free so that anyone who needs our help and support can join us.

Membership

Latest News

We have received the following requests - so are circulating them to our members and readers in case you wish to respond to them personally to help with the research.

From: King’s College London
My name is Francisco Brenes and I’m a researcher at King’s College London. We are doing a qualitative study looking at experiences of anxiety and/or depression following a heart attack in the UK.
Please see details in poster above


And from: The Patients Association
Angina is chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart muscle. It is a symptom of coronary heart disease. 
Each year about 20,000 people in the UK develop the heart condition angina. It is most common in people over the age of 50. 
One common treatment option for angina is planned coronary angioplasty (also known as heart stents/stenting). 
The Patients Association are working with researchers at The Open University to make a toolkit to help patients, doctors, and nurses work together when thinking about having a heart stent for angina. 
Through research, The Patients Association knows that people don’t always have a say in decisions about their healthcare as much as they would like to. They want the toolkit to help improve this for people considering heart stenting. They have launched a survey to learn more about people’s experience. 
Share your views: If you or someone you care for have been offered planned treatment with heart stents in the UK in the last five years, The Patients Association would like to know more about your experience. 
The anonymous online survey will ask about your visits with the heart doctors/nurses and the information given about heart stents and other treatment for angina. It will take about 20-30 minutes to complete. 


You can fill out the survey here 
   Survey opens: 9am Friday 28th March 
Survey closes: 5pm Friday 25th April 

Thanking you in advance.

The Admin Team


Email: mailbox@patients-association.org.uk

Main office: 020 8423 9111 Helpline: 0800 345 7115

Website: www.patients-association.org.uk Twitter: @PatientsAssoc  Facebook: Patients Association



So if you feel you would like to help with either of these requests please respond to them directly.


Online Skills

One of the areas that the pandemic has highlighted is the need to provide more support and training for online activities, whether that be work related, leisure related or as mentioned above, being able to access health care.

 

There are a quite a few initiatives out there now that are free to access. Below are a couple of links that you may find useful as starting points.


British Heart Foundation - Heart Matters

Some of you already subscribe to this excellent newsletter. If you would like to subscribe (it’s free) the link for signing up can be found at https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-subscribe


It has some really useful and informative articles, for example in this month’s edition are a list of the 10 most healthy breakfast cereals. (Porridge without added salt or sugar is the best).