World Mental Health Day (10th October) is an international day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy against social stigma. It was first celebrated in 1992 at the initiative of the World Federation for Mental Health. This day, each October, thousands of supporters come to celebrate this annual awareness program to bring attention to mental illness and its major effects on people's lives.
World Mental Health Day was celebrated for the first time on October 10, 1992, at the initiative of Deputy Secretary General Richard Hunter. Up until 1994, the day had no specific theme other than general promoting mental health advocacy and educating the public. In 1994, for the first time with the suggestion of then Secretary General Eugene Brody, this day was celebrated with a theme. The theme was "Improving the Quality of Mental Health Services throughout the World".World Mental Health Day is supported by WHO through raising awareness on mental health issues using its strong relationships with the Ministries of Health and civil society organizations across the globe.
World Mental Health Day is celebrated to raise awareness of mental health issues around the world and to mobilize efforts in support of mental health. The day provides an opportunity for mental health workers working in this field to talk about their work and what more news to be done to make mental health care a reality for people around the world. Most importantly this day is celebrated to normalize the mental health issues in our society and to treat them as normal physical problems.
Today as a developing nation and a world, most of the time we remain busy at our work, and in our spare time, we spend time on social media. Due to this people are continuously comparing their lifestyles with others and are neglecting their own capacities in life and their relationships. As a consequence of this, day by day people are getting along, and a majority of the time they suffer from mild or severe mental disorders like anxiety, depression, nervousness, social phobia, and stress. The impact of these conditions in someone’s life could be social detachment from everyone, relationship and family conflicts, missed work or school, and financial problems. This can also cause serious physical problems related to stress like panic and heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke, insomnia, fatigue, and so on.
To deal with these problems in our lives we can ask for help and support from the well-trained mental health workers like psychologists, counselors, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists. With the help of these therapies, interviews, counseling sessions, and in some cases with some medications they can help us to deal with our mental problems and to maintain well-being in our lives. They can help us to better understand and cope with our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. They can also offer guidance and help to improve a person's ability to achieve life goals.
We can also take some small steps towards our mental health by doing some regular exercises, meditation, or yoga which will help to decrease anxiety and stress, eating nutritious food, spending some quality time with family and friends on weekends, and sharing our work-related or personal life stresses with them, along with this you can also try to do some recreational activities like drawing, dancing, reading books, playing some sports. Most importantly try to reduce screen time and maintain a proper sleep cycle.
In the end, it can be said that World Mental Health Day is a small step towards making everybody conscious about their mental health. It also normalizes mental health issues by having discussions about several topics on mental health. This day also conveys the message that to maintain a proper well-being in our life our mental health is also an utmost important criterion to maintain.
~ Isha Gupta
Intern at Your Thoughtful Therapist
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