Mental Health Awareness

Mental health awareness is the ongoing effort helping to reduce stigma around mental illnesses and mental health conditions by sharing our personal experiences.

Often, because of misconceptions about mental health and mental fitness, people often suffer in silence and their conditions go untreated. Mental health awareness is an important social movement to both improve understanding and increase access to healthcare.

Mental health awareness is critical to promoting mental health treatment and behavioral health. It’s a necessary and foundational conversation for changing to a more proactive model of mental health.

Developing our awareness helps us to start recognizing the signs and symptoms when we’re feeling “off” — just as we do with physical illness. The importance of this awareness are as follow:

1. Helps you understand your symptoms
Sometimes, there is magic in having a diagnosis. Despite the stigma around the term, it’s simply a shorthand for a collection of symptoms that occur together.

Especially with mental health conditions, which are difficult to pinpoint — and sometimes impossible to find — on a test, a diagnosis can be incredibly validating. It can help people feel less alone and make it easier to find treatment. Pay attention to your symptoms. For example, you might feel like your mental health worsens with social media use.

2. Starts a conversation
Mental health awareness is an ongoing conversation, but up until recently, it’s only been had in whispers. But because a common feature of many moods and anxiety disorders is distorted thinking, talking about it can actually be immensely therapeutic.

Building a support network and speaking with a licensed mental health professional is critical to alleviating symptoms of many mental health conditions.

Unfortunately, stigma creates silence. It also makes it difficult to ask for support at work or in other environments that might be made more challenging by a mental health diagnosis.

3. Better education
It’s crucial for caregivers, employers, parents, family members, and loved ones to understand the impact that mental health has on daily life. However, while mental health conditions can make daily life more difficult, they also don’t have to prevent you from having a fulfilling and engaging life.

When the people in your life understand and prioritize mental health care, it makes it easier to take the actions you need to do to take care of yourself and thrive.

4. Promotes mental fitness
Many of us have fallen into the trap of thinking of mental health as solely related to mental illness. However, it’s possible to have a mental health condition and be mentally fit, and the absence of a mental health condition doesn’t necessarily ensure mental fitness.

Expanding our understanding of mental health issues and wellness to incorporate mental fitness, a proactive approach to emotional health, well-being, and cognitive agility. It allows us to live life with more purpose, clarity, and passion. Reducing the stigma around mental health is an important step to embracing mental fitness.

Please feel free to share your experiences on mental health awareness on our Testimonials page.