360- mhaw18 concludes...

This is the last day of #mhaw18 (or #mhaw2018 if you prefer), the most concentrated week in May, Mental Health Awareness Month. We try to raise understanding and to build bridges between us, sufferers, and those around us, who don't suffer, in order to break down stigma and to remind everyone, that though statistics show 1 in 4 or 5 people in any modern society may suffer from mental illness, every person has mental health, and it's important to preserve and safeguard by many means. 

You saw from previous entries that sleep and lifestyle can help greatly in maintaining our mental health, or to at least reduce the impact of mental illness - to a point.

Mental illnesses don't vanish just by our efforts to eat, drink and sleep well, nor by avoiding the unhealthier versions of these acts. They don't fade into nothingness just by deciding that we want to get better, nor do they disappear by magic. 

It takes a LOT of personal commitment and work, often combined with therapy and social coping, given by social circles of friends and/or family, whenever possible. 

It may also be helped by proper medication, and for all these, we do need awareness days, weeks and months... only if the bridge created in dialogue during those assigned slots extends into knowledge that is shared by all.

On the other hand, recovery and help cannot be done solely by talking and having awareness slots on our calendar. We need governments to fund more of everything :

• More awareness at the root, helping understaffed schools to better help their personnel and children's mental health ; this has to be done by hiring more personnel (teachers, nurses and so on), to alleviate the stress on each person, not to mention for employment. 
• Teachers who can discern early signs of mental illness could help preventing them worsening, as early detection could mean less suffering 
• More funding for mental health professionals, equality in funds to shorten waiting lines for therapy, making it easier for patients to get help asap and not months or years after their crisis started. The earliest the intervention, more efficient the system can be to help those in need, and to prevent complications for sufferers, and workload on caregivers. 
• Better follow-up for patients, and also... 
• ... Follow-up and control of therapists. If this existed here in France, my first CBT wouldn't have dragged on to nowhere for a year+ before I found another therapist. There is currently 0 control of therapists, so they get paid and if you don't know better, you'll go back forever and not get help 
• Not only this, but unfriendly, uncompassionate and unsympathetic ears are often the lot for many patients, so the funding must include proper training in bedside manners for all involved 
• Even once we get a nice therapist who understands and gives advice, recovery isn't immediate nor fast. It goes all kinds of twisted knots and curved, muddy pathways are common. 

So, mhaw18 is over. Mental health month is still going on, but what really needs to be going on is to open up space for sufferers to be able to talk freely about struggles, and not be stigmatized, misunderstood or ill-treated. We've enough on our plate to deal with, than stigma and misconception. One week, or one month cannot be enough, we need to talk, today, tomorrow, any day that is needed to break down the walls that separate us in appearance but which are nothing more than the walls society before us erected and current one has started learning how to dismantle, brick by brick. One day, I hope all the dialogues which all of us mental health activists have brought forth shall bring all these seeds of understanding to fruition, and a better society, where compassion is ahead of any wall of misconception and stigma. 

Let's learn from yesterday, to build today, the world of tomorrow, together. If you don't suffer, you can participate. If you don't know much on the topic, educate yourself, research or ask us questions, we are here to answer that just like talk is beyond mental awareness days, we are more than the sum of our struggles and mental illnesses : we are people, like yourself. 

Today concludes the week, but the month goes on, so expect more posts in May, and beyond.