Why It's Essential to Talk About Mental Health Every Day
Mental Health Awareness Week takes place in October and serves as an opportunity for people to bring awareness to mental health struggles. This week aims to bring awareness to mental health, break stigmas, and teach ways we can all improve our mental health. This week was created by the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI).
Why Talking About Mental Health Matters
Talking about mental health is beneficial for both ourselves and the communities we live in. If we can talk about mental health in our daily lives, it helps us to keep it in our awareness and helps it from being pushed under the rug. Sometimes it seems like mental health is a luxury when so many other things take up our time. But improving our mental health will improve almost all areas of our lives.
Benefits for Individuals
On an individual basis, talking about mental health plays a role in our own mental health journeys. For example, talking about mental health daily provides accountability for people struggling with mental health. This makes mental health part of the conversations that we have with our loved ones. This provides the opportunity to stay accountable to loved ones in their effort to get better. Another way that talking about mental health every day is helpful is that it helps to validate the need for therapy. Therapy is an incredible tool to use in improving our mental health. Unfortunately, people often feel nervous to start therapy due to stigmas.
Benefits for Community
On the other hand, talking about mental health daily also helps our communities and society as a whole. When we talk about these things, it helps to decrease mental health stigmas. Stigmas against mental health are often one of the largest barriers to treatment. Another way that talking about mental health helps society is that it stresses the importance of access to mental health services. This might help create policy change or pressure insurance companies to offer more behavioral health coverage. Discussing mental health daily also helps educate the public about the complexities of mental health. We can all play our part in spreading awareness and advocating for mental health for everyone who needs it.
Bringing awareness to mental health struggles is important for the mental well-being of ourselves and our society around us. If we can all lead with awareness, the hope is that people will be more compassionate to those struggling with mental health. Even though we highlighted above the importance of National Mental Health Awareness Week, we encourage you to bring these principles into all the weeks of the year.
If you (or someone you love) are struggling with their mental health and needs extra support, we are here for you! Reach out to us today if you are ready to start your healing journey.
References
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5579872/
https://www.nami.org/
https://www.apa.org/topics/psychotherapy
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10779020/
https://www.mentalhealthjournal.org/articles/mental-health-education-awareness
Keywords: mental health awareness, therapy, mental health stigma, mental well-being