We've launched a campaign this month to start an open, honest and public conversation about the risks posed by unchecked depression. As Teacher Support Network's chief executive, Julian Stanley, pointed out in this week's SecEd column, an estimated 1 in 5 people (20 per cent of the population) will suffer from depression at some point in their lives.

We've create a number of tools in order to highlight this very real problem.

Today, we would like you to speak up if you or someone you know has ever been affected by depression or mental health issues:

Facebook

• Update your facebook status to read: "is speaking up about depression.  Depression is likely to be the second biggest health problem after heart disease by 2020, so why are we afraid to talk about the problem?  Teacher Support Network wants everyone who has lived with or knows someone who has lived with depression to speak up by copying and pasting this message into their status and changing their profile picture to a mouth."
• Change your Facebook photo to an image of your (or any) mouth. If you don't have a photo of a mouth handy, you can use ours here.
  
• Ask your friends, family and facebook groups to do the same.
• Ask your friends on Facebook to ask their other friends and family to do similar and so on, so that we begin to see the scale of the problem and how it affects us all.

Twitter

• Update your Twitter feed to read: "teachersupport I am speaking up about depression. You can to at http://bit.ly/h1fnwc" (click here)
  
• Change your Twitter photo to an image of a mouth. If you don't have a picture of a mouth handy, you can use one that we made by simply clicking here.
  
•  Ask your Twitter followers to do the same.
• Ask them to ask their Twitter followers to do similar and so on.

Other Things you can do

Factsheets: If you or someone you know is effected by depression, these factsheets could help.

• What is Depression?
• Treatments for depression
• What is Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)?
• Spotting signs of a mental health problem

Read: Julian Stanley's column on speaking up about depression.
Join the discussion: Have you or someone you know ever suffered depression?