As a society I’d give us 5/10 on mental health awareness

I saw a lot of posts last week about not needing to focus on Mental Health Awareness week this year because we should be thinking about mental health and kindness all the time. But I disagree.

I don’t think we’re advanced enough on this subject to stop spotlighting and building focus on it. As a society I’d give us 5/10 on mental health awareness. We need those annual reminders.

We continue to make choices at work that don’t support our health (e.g. don’t worry about me I’ll push on through attitude) and lack the self awareness to notice when we’re on the edge.⁠ I think at our current stage of development we continue to need specific days, weeks and themes that encourage us to develop this. And of course we need to speak about these things outside of dedicated days as well.⁠

If you’re feeling overwhelmed at the moment, I get that you don’t want tons more information from videos and webinars this week. So instead, why not take the opportunity to deal with that overwhelm?

Do what works for you; book a day off, use audio only on zoom for a day, call a friend, have a lie in. Whatever helps you.

I think this is a useful week to remind us that we can look after ourselves better.

What do you think?

P.S. The work the Mental Health Awareness UK team did this year was fantastic, they encouraged people to think about the theme of ‘kindness.’ I highly recommend looking into the resources on their website.