World Mental Health Day

Who knew that those that suffer from mental ailments had their own global holiday? I didn’t. It turns out that Friday October 10, 2008 was World Mental Health Day.

This mental health initiative is the creation of the World Federation for Mental Health or the WFMH . The stated goal of this quasi holiday slash global mental health awareness movement states as it’s priority the "scaling up of services through citizen advocacy and action".

The first Mental Health Health Day was celebrated in 1992 and so it only took me 16 years to hear about it. You may have heard of it, but sadly the fact that I haven’t heard about it is symptomatic of how mental health issues are treated in the United States. It is almost a non- issue for the government and the general public.

Unfortunately the only mental ailment you ever really hear about is depression and that is mainly because of the television adverts that push the newest drugs and inundate us on a regular basis. If it wasn’t for the pharmaceutical companies I’m not sure that you would hear much about anything related to mental health issues.

I’m also not sure about other countries and the state of their mental health apparatus but at least here in the U.S. they generally don’t have 5k fund raisers for anxiety disorder research or high tech facilities dedicated to fighting mental ailments.

However it’s not like there isn’t really bright people working on mental health research in our universities – it’s just that with so many millions of people affected by mental health issues it is hard to understand why there is not more awareness, research, and support for those that need it.

Hopefully things will change in the 21st century but until then happy World Mental Health day!

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