'A moment for mental health': Rethink Mental Illness visit the Guardian

The Rethink Mental Illness carers’ group in Manchester is part of a national network Photograph: Graeme Robertson/the Guardian

Another December day – and still your donations are streaming in.

You have now raised £140,290 for nine inspiring mental health charities.

Thank you!

Inside the building, we’ve been busy too:

Rethink Mental Illness came in this morning

Incredibly, your donations are coming in at almost twice the rate of last year’s appeal. It really feels like this is an issue you want to put your hearts, minds (and wallets!) behind.

Chief Executive of Christmas appeal charity Rethink Mental Illness, Mark Winstanley thinks so too. Just this morning he dropped in to talk to us about how the landscape around mental health is changing.

This does feel like a real moment for mental health. There seems to be a change in terms of political will with a shift to mental health being seen not just about the NHS but about justice, the rights of individuals, and being treated with dignity – although there is still a gap between rhetoric and reality. Public opinion is changing and people, particularly people like public life such as MPs, are a lot more open to talking about it. We are really pleased that the Christmas appeal can play a part in this too.

We’ve been fundraising too

Inspired by your support for the appeal, inside the building we’ve been trying to play our part too.

We had plenty of fun taking your calls during Saturday’s telethon but we’ve been having some fun to raise money for the appeal during the week too (we do work sometimes – promise!)

Most of this has been down to a healthy dose of competition, with the floors of King’s Place being pitted against each other to see who can raise the most cash. The strategies used were almost entirely built around replacing any well loved traditional game with innocuous festive references. Hence we’ve been enjoying a pin the nose on Rudolph game, a guess the number of brussel sprouts in the jar competition and a wear your Christmas jumper to work day

The first floor team refused to play ball with the Christmas theme however with their winning chicken nugget competition.

It should have been turkey really.... Photograph: Guardian

We’re very happy as all of these efforts added a lovely £3,911 to the fundraising pot.

Wherever you are, if you want to donate to the appeal still, you can do so here

Thank you for being so generous. If you have done anything festive or fun to raise money for the appeal, let us know in the comments below.