Hi everyone, welcome to another blog post from Matthew Mckenzie a mental health carer from the London Borough of Lewisham. As of this blog post, it is World Mental Health Day 2015 or #WMHD2015. There are lots of events that are being held on October the 10th, but there are plenty more mental health events being held in the month of October.

So what is World Mental Health Day all about? Basically its a day where awareness of mental health is raised all over the world to try and break stigma, aid recovery and celebrate those who are going through mental health difficulties or have become survivors.

Each World Mental Health Day has a theme each year. For World Mental Health Day 2013, the theme was “Mental health and older adults“, for World Mental Health Day 2014, the theme was “Living with schizophrenia”. For 2015, this time the theme is Dignity in Mental Health.

As you can see, each theme is thought out carefully and this gives organisations, groups and individuals a chance to develop on such themes for their events. Everyone who is going through a difficult time in mental health deserves the chance to have some dignity. The thing with mental health is that its not like a broken leg, or broken arm. People suffering mental health problems can just look like you or me. They do not often cry out for help, sometimes we need to recognises our fragile state and offer some support or help.

The other side of the coin is when we come across those suffering chronic levels of mental health problems, such service users may act strange to others or seem dangerous to people, but the thing is mental health has been given a difficult time in the media. As soon as someone becomes labelled with a mental health condition, then thats who they become, thats perhaps all we can see, a label and not a person……for the rest of their lives.

If we only stop for a moment and think twice about those suffering under mental health conditions, we can still see a human being inside. Mental health sufferers should not be prosecuted due to guilt by association. All it takes is for one person to act out of malice and all mental health sufferers can face the blame. E.g. Mass shootings, plane crashes and murders.

Perhaps it is us as a society that can allow situations where it can be so easily to pick up mental health problems due to the pressure and stress society can bring. Everyday it is so easy to judge others as much as we judge ourselves. People deserve some dignity, people deserve some respect because we can all go through such difficult times.

I hope I have done my bit to raise awareness for World Mental Health day 2015.

Please check out the World Health Organisation’s Page for World Mental Health Day 2015.