Mental Health Awareness Week 2017 has started and there seems to be a greater push than ever to raise awareness of mental and in doing so remove the stigma it bears. It’s vitally important that awareness of our own mental health is raised. Why? – Well the condition of our mental health is as fundamental to us as our physical well being and has a dramatic impact on our achievements and interactions with the rest of our society.
Disabilites and deafness in society are surley but very slowly becoming more mainstream and accepted, there is still a long way to go to profound acceptance without the ‘sympanthy’ but there has been marked changes in society, adverts with deaf and disabled actors, disabled and deaf olympians and more emphasis on opportunities and equiality for all. However mental health is no way on a par with other disabilites and deafness – its still shuned and the treatemtns of such are still very much archaic.
Your mental health is vitally important, to maintain and take care of it takes effort and without the right attention we could find ourselves in a sitaution we would never of imagined. Our own operations director experienced a maasive hit to her mental health following a serious road traffic incident, at first it was the physical healing but it was quickly noted by colleagues that her behaviour seemed a little odd, nonetheless she ended up recieivng services from the Royal Bethlam a well known SE London Mental Health Hospital.
Unlike the physical trauma, the shock and trauma to her mental health has taken over a decade to get back under control, and she now makes it a daily concerted effort to take care of this asset.
In the face of an obesity epidemic much has been made of our physical health needs. We would like to think that the UK is progressive and open but in the area of mental health awareness we are struggling to emphasise how important talking about and taking action on our mental health is.
