As it is Mental Health Awareness Week, some of the wonderful writers of Mental Magazine shared what they think mental health is and why it is important to them.
Emily Tumber: “I’ve seen so many people around me struggle with their mental health for as long as I can remember. I’ve also seen what struggling with an illness you just don’t understand can look like. I’ve also felt the pain and isolation that untreated, undiagnosed mental illness can cause. We have to create a safer, more accepting world.”
Grace Grossman: “Mental health is important. Is it the conduct of our lives and how well or bad we may be doing. For me, mental health is mental hygiene – so keeping clean mentally and physically. Mental health is important because people suffer from it and I too, have been a sufferer of depression and schizophrenia. You never know what someone is going through.”
Samantha Mansi: “My mental health is when my anxiety gets out of hand. When I overthink and I worry. I just can’t turn my mind off at night. Mental health to me means years of being in a fight v flight which was both mentally exhausting and extremely tiring.”
Joana Costa: “My mental health journey has allowed me to understand why I am the way I am and how to deal with it in a healthy manner. Mental health awareness destigmatizes and normalises the need for help when it comes to invisible struggles and illnesses that we all have to face throughout life.”
Bernardo Almeida: “I come from a culture where mental health isn’t taken seriously. It is seen as a form of laziness or lack of strength. Only after living in the UK, I came to realise things had names and I managed to help, guilt-free. Nowadays I talk about mental health because I know it eats me away if I keep it to myself.”
Carolina Piras: “Latin philosophers used to say ‘mens sana in corpore sana’, which means that you can’t have a healthy body, without having a healthy mind. That is what mental health is for me, are the roots of life and the thing that we should pay attention to throughout our lives.”