Category: Workd Mental Health Day

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World Mental Health Day 2022

In the US alone:

Every year, one in five adults experience a mental illness.

One in twenty adults experience a serious mental illness.

Fifty percent of mental illnesses begin by age fourteen.

The average delay between the onset of mental illness and treatment is ELEVEN YEARS.

People experiencing depression have a 40% higher risk of developing cardiovascular and metabolic disease than the general population.

In 2020, 32.1% of adults experiencing mental illness also experienced a substance use disorder.

October 10 is World Mental Health Day, asking for attention to be drawn to what has historically been known as a silent struggle for generations of people.

Seeking out help from a Mental Health Professional is NO different from going to your physical doctor for your checkup or taking your car in for service when the check engine light is on. Yet, social and cultural stigma has plagued and embarrassed those that experience mental illness for decades.

Some easy things to do to help yourself are:

Move your body. Exercise. Ride a bike. Go for a walk. Our bodies are designed to be mobile, not to sit at desks all day. It’s good to break a little sweat each day if you can.

Spend some of that exercise time in nature. Go for a walk in the woods or in a park. Sit under a tree for a while if you can. Just be quiet as you walk or bike through the woods and see what you can hear.

Eat well. That doesn’t mean a Big Mac. That means eat seasonal and locally grown foods as often as you can. Avoid dairy, especially as you age. Experiment and see for yourself, how you feel when you eat heavy and how you feel when you eat lighter.

Its time to end the stigma and the struggle.

Emergency Contact information is below:

Crisis Text Line

Text MHFA to 741741 to speak with a trained crisis counselor.

Mental Health America offers compiled lists of help resources in both telephone and text at https://www.mhanational.org/get-involved/contact-us

In Southeastern Michigan, Common Ground offers lifelines for crisis and suicide prevention, Urgent Care Clinicians, and has an online Resource and Crisis Center.  Visit https://commongroundhelps.org

Lastly, reach out to psychologytoday.com or your local Hospitals for contact information for Mental Health support in your area.

Its never too late for the rest of your life.

#mentalhealthday #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthmatters 

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World Mental Health Day

October 10 is World Mental Health Day. This day was created to draw attention to the importance of Mental Health, and to help understand it a little better. So I’m going to share a very personal story here to demonstrate the importance of understanding not only Mental Health, but also the importance of understanding life.

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself emotionally triggered by an event that took place. But initially, all I understood about what was happening was the emotion that I was experiencing; which made absolutely no sense at all. I couldn’t figure it out, and all I was doing was experiencing this emotional reaction to something that I couldn’t connect a reason to.

Well, eventually I enlisted a trusted ear that immediately reminded me that I was being triggered by an old reaction that was left over from something that happened twenty years ago. I couldn’t believe it. I’d worked on myself for literally years. HOW could this old thing come up out of nowhere like it happened just the other day when I was sure that I’d settled it long ago?

This is the important part.
Life is NOT linear; life is cyclical. Life only appears linear to us because of how we measure time. But that’s not how life actually flows. It is cyclical, like so many other things in our perception; a day cycle, seasonal cycles, lunar cycles, etc. The same things that “got us” once upon a time can and likely WILL come up again and again during our lifetimes. But with each reoccurrence comes the opportunity to take a step back from ourselves and go “Oh yeah, there this is again” and respond more effectively and appropriately.

So if you’ve ever experienced something coming back up in your life time and again, even though you may have worked on it, do NOT beat yourself up thinking that you didn’t do a good enough job or that you didn’t “do the right thing” about whatever your situation is. This is how life happens. With each (re)occurrence comes another opportunity to put a little distance between you and the situation so that you can see for yourself that the situation isn’t you at all.