On celebrating mental health 365 days a year

Photo by Gustavo Torres on Unsplash

Last week we ‘celebrated’ World Mental Health day. How many of you did know World Mental Health day falls on the tenth of October? No worries if you didn’t.

I have to say I wouldn’t know either if I didn’t stumble upon it on my friend’s Instagram stories. If it wouldn’t be for the Instagram stories, then definitely for a sudden surge in articles related to mental health ever-increasing problems across other media channels.

Yes, ‘celebrating’ the importance of mental health is genuinely excellent. The only thing I find sad is this. As soon as the day is over, we go back to our regular lives. Wast majority of us will store the mental health into a file and rediscover it again the year after.

Despite the ever-increasing people suffering from mental health issues, we don’t realize the following: Our mental health deserves attention 365 days a year. One would think that in such an ‘advanced society’ [sarcasm], it would be the opposite trend.

The thing is your mind, emotions and feelings are with you and shape you 24/7.

So, my question is:

How often do you check in with yourself?

How often do you check in with your family, friends, colleague by asking a simple question as to how are you doing?

Every single day of our lives, we experience events that trigger an endless amount of emotions on an ongoing basis. Often, we go through months of an emotional roller-coaster without giving it much of an attention. We keep going despite the state of our mind. Why?

Well, because we have work to do, family to take care of, targets to meet, promises to fulfill. Sometimes it looks like we often feel accomplished only because numbers or social conventions tell us so. Yeah, we do not feel great all the time, but looking at the next person, who does? And no matter how we feel at the back of our mind, we keep going.

When it becomes too much, some of us like to escape for short holidays. Few people will try to resolve their mental health issues using mobile apps. Some and probably more of us want to pretend these things don’t affect us. They don’t exist in our world…