World Mental Health Day is an opportunity for us to embrace our sense of community and normalize mental health

In 2022, WHO released its landmark work on mental health, the World Mental Health Report. The report provides a blueprint for governments, academics, health professionals, civil society and others to help the world transform mental health.

One of the pervasive themes the report addresses is stigma. Stigma, discrimination and human rights abuses against people with mental illness are widespread in communities and care systems everywhere. Today’s Lancet Commission on Ending Stigma and Discrimination in Mental Health will therefore be timely and well received, but how will it make a difference?

Stigma has many faces. We most often equate it with how we treat each other. However, this is only part of the problem; Personal shame internalized by a person’s psychological suffering is a silent issue. We need to normalize talking about mental health and its multitude of conditions because stigma is the chain that all mental health conditions are connected to.

A strength of the WHO’s World Mental Health Report is that it includes diverse stories of people living with mental illness. We are grateful to the 30+ people who shared their stories of endurance and survival. Her courage in telling her story is commendable and humbling; By listening to more and more experiences like theirs, we can learn how to offer better support and normalize conversations.

The same applies to the recent WHO guidelines on mental health at work. With an estimated 12 billion lost workdays each year due to depression and anxiety, the new guidelines recommend measures to address mental health risks in the workplace, such as: B. Heavy workload, negative behavior and other factors that cause stress at work.

Each week brings a new challenge to our personal and collective mental health – conflict, disease and climate require a new kind of resilience in our mental health. Without saying it and understanding it, we will continue to wallpaper the cracks.

Looking at the ambitions for this year’s World Mental Health Day, there are four priorities that WHO would like to see implemented:

• fund Mental Health Services – It is estimated that countries spend less than 2% of their healthcare budget on mental health services. With approximately 1 billion people living with a mental disorder in 2019, services are radically underfunded.
• Continuing education ourselves and our caregivers with an understanding of mental health, understanding very personal experiences and how to provide support. The WHO mental health e-training on quality rights is a good place to start. This training is designed to improve the quality of mental health and related services and to promote the rights of people with psychosocial, intellectual and cognitive disabilities.
• Prioritize mental health through our own self-care, analyzing workplace practices to ensure employees are successful and ensuring there is strong community mental health care.
• listen the voices of people with lived experience of mental illness. Their experience will teach us how best to support and care for them.

Mental illness tends to be painful, and unfortunately, stigma only adds to that burden. Let’s embrace the wise words of this year’s World Mental Health Day theme and make mental health and wellbeing a truly global priority for all.