By Haley Heisey
“Mental health problems don’t define who you are. They are something you experience. You walk in the rain and feel the rain, but you are not the rain.” -Matt Haig, Author
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), more than 1 in 5 U.S. adults live with a mental illness and over 1 in 5 youth (ages 13-18) either currently or at some point during their life have had a seriously debilitating mental illness. When you think about those statistics, it’s as small as 1 person in a group of friends or 1 person in each family having a mental illness. On a larger scale, think of the hundreds of people you pass everyday struggling with mental illness in their lives and we have no idea. It is time to treat mental illness as important as physical diagnosis and mental health as important as our physical body’s health.
World Mental Health Day this year is on October 24, 2024. The history behind this important day began in 1948, and ever since then has been working to grow into a global organization. The theme this year is, “It is time to prioritize mental health in the workplace.” We remind ourselves to seek alone time at home and enjoy our days off, but who says we can’t prioritize ourselves too while we are at work? If you do not take care of you, how will you ever be able to take care of anyone or anything else? Working in healthcare, there are many moments of high stress, and afterwards I need to take a step aside and collect myself before taking on another strenuous task so that I know I will show up as my best self. I once heard something along the lines of, “instead of giving it your all, give it your best, because if you give your all you are left with nothing.”
What can you and I do? If you are struggling with mental illness or know someone who is, seek help from a doctor or even from someone close to you in life. Remind yourself that it is okay to feel this way, but you should not have to feel it anymore. When it comes to the topics of anxiety and depression, these affect many people on many different scales. You never know what’s on someone’s mind or what’s going on in someone’s life, so always be the person that isn’t part of the problem of the increase in mental illness and be a part of the awareness. In your home, your school, your community, your workplace and in the world.
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