Happy Saturday! Today we have great plans for pumpkin patches and apple orchards! but today is also a day of real purpose and meaning. It's World Mental Health day. What are you doing to honor it if at all? Any little bit helps! According to the World Health Organization:
World Mental Health Day is observed on 10 October every year, with the overall objective of raising awareness of mental health issues around the world and mobilizing efforts in support of mental health.
The Day provides an opportunity for all stakeholders working on mental health issues to talk about their work, and what more needs to be done to make mental health care a reality for people worldwide.
The main thing I do to stop the stigma is blog about my own mental health trials and tribulations and expose my inner most painful secrets and feelings to the world. Although there is a pandemic happening right now involving the coronavirus, there's another type of pandemic bubbling right below the surface of our PPE. Every year the WHO like's to add a specific goal or concentrating for World Mental Health day. Last year was suicide prevention and this year's goal is to kickstart a massive scale-up in investment. I donate money to NAMI, as you all know it's my favorite non-profit to donate to as it offers free mental health care nation wide.
This year’s World Mental Health Day, on 10 October, comes at a time when our daily lives have changed considerably as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The past months have brought many challenges: for health-care workers, providing care in difficult circumstances, going to work fearful of bringing COVID-19 home with them; for students, adapting to taking classes from home, with little contact with teachers and friends, and anxious about their futures; for workers whose livelihoods are threatened; for the vast number of people caught in poverty or in fragile humanitarian settings with extremely limited protection from COVID-19; and for people with mental health conditions, many experiencing even greater social isolation than before. And this is to say nothing of managing the grief of losing a loved one, sometimes without being able to say goodbye. Here's more good info from WHO about this topic:
The economic consequences of the pandemic are already being felt, as companies let staff go in an effort to save their businesses, or indeed shut down completely.
Given past experience of emergencies, it is expected that the need for mental health and psychosocial support will substantially increase in the coming months and years. Investment in mental health programmes at the national and international levels, which have already suffered from years of chronic underfunding, is now more important than it has ever been.
This is why the goal of this year’s World Mental Health Day campaign is increased investment in mental health.
Most of us don't have the extra money to donate. but time is also money so invest your time. Share this blog and share what today means to you on social media using the hashtag #WorldMentalHealthDay
See you back here tomorrow!
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