World Mental Health Day is today

http://www.who.int/mental_health/world-mental-health-day/2018/en/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daniel...uld-pay-attention-to-world-mental-health-day/


If you’ve ever heard the term ‘mental health’ and thought this isn’t for me, you may just want to keep reading.

While the language around mental health and mental illness has existed for decades, the conversation itself has become far more open and relevant to all (and rightly so). Mind, the UK’s leading mental health charity summarises it concisely by saying “mental health can affect anyone any day of the year”.


While there is a World ‘Day’ for almost everything, today – World Mental Health Day – feels particularly significant and worthy of attention.

• Mental health problems are one of the main causes of disease burden worldwide.
• In the UK approximately one in four people will experience a mental health problem each year.
• And one in six report experiencing one of the most common problems, such as anxiety and depression, in any given week.

Days like today at the very least, bring global attention to an important conversation and provide an opportunity for people to share and speak up more publicly about their own experiences.

In our increasingly online and social media-filled world, the necessity for people to hear the raw truth of what is really going on has become somewhat of a lifeline. Humans need to create meaning around their experiences to make sense of their lives and stories enable us to do so.

I think there’s a misnomer we’ve created in our own minds that to ‘deserve’ support you must be really depressed. Or that ‘mental health’ must only be for those clinically ill or suffering really badly.

When we are able to experience others’ vulnerability, when their ‘masks’ are removed, we get to feel far more connected too. The shame we might hold around what we’re really experiencing gets exposed. And as Brene Brown, a global researcher on shame and fear says, shame can’t survive being spoken about.

Plus when others share that ultimately, behind the scenes there are both up and down days, it reiterates that we really are all simply human. Doing the best we can.

 

Thanks for putting this up.
The more this stigma is talked about the better for everyone.

 

I’ve weirdly never felt any shame around expressing any mental health problems I’ve had.

 

I didn't either ... until I tried telling my parents.

 

I just refuse to tell them as it would worry them. Tell my siblings and some pals, though.

 

My parents didn't give a *. In fact, my dad wondered what would make me actually commit suicide.

 

* sake, man, I’m sorry

 

Thanks. Living at home was a nightmare, though. Glad that's all in the past.

 

Onwards and upwards.

 

I'm the only one in my immediate family who has not spent time in a mental health hospital. But have wanted to die and have tried to die from the age of about 10 lol

 

#voteforgaza

 

Used to find it hard mentioning/talking about it..

Took me year's until the missus practically dragged me to the doctor's about it and it all flooded out..