WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY 2022

-What exactly is mental health?
-Why is mental health important?
-Why do we need a mental health day?

According to the latest W.H.O. reports there are at least 150 suicides that occur every day. YES. Everyday.Is there something that’s triggering this? Why do the numbers keep on increasing and never see a declining trend? And what are we doing towards this issue?

Mental health is the psychological and emotional well being of an individual. Mental health is as important as physical health, however we seldom take care of our mental well being. We are, from a young age taught to take care of our physical health, hygiene and social behavior, but never told or taught to care for ourselves, in terms of emotions or feelings. And to add on, we just went through a pandemic, which fueled a global crisis in mental health; further distancing ourselves from ourselves.

What is the reason that despite constant efforts in this direction we are not able to see the expected results? Have we failed as a society to take care of each other? Or have we actually not learned to take care of ourselves? The thing with mental health is that no matter how hard we try to reach to conclusions, it becomes really hard to pinpoint the exact cause or trigger of the condition. Adding to the trouble, we can easily identify physical pain in ourselves as well as other, while with mental health it becomes impossible to tell if the other person is suffering from any distress, or worse it also becomes hard for oneself to tell if we aren’t alright.

What is the need for a mental health day? What exactly is done or supposed to be done on this day? Well the answer is simple, we are not celebrating anything particular. This day is targeted just to spread awareness about mental health and let people know that help is available, if not for yourself then for someone you care. The aim is to wipe off the stigma around mental health and encourage everyone to speak up. Awareness is not something that will spread like wild fire, it takes years and years to learn something new and many more years to unlearn something that has been engraved as normalcy in our minds.

The Federation for Mental Health has announced this year’s theme to be ‘Mental Health in an Unequal World’ With this theme, the federation promotes equal care for everyone no matter what. This day enables to rekindle the spirit of wellness and uplifting the society. Mental health should not be a privilege for just a section of the society and WHO and The Federation for Mental Health are constantly working towards this mutual goal.

-STAY HEALTH

Dr. Aishwarya Nair