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What’s So Good About World Mental Health Day?

World Mental Health Day is something that was probably popping up all over your newsfeed on October 10th. There’s a reason for that. October 10th is, well, World Mental Health Day. One day out of the whole year where the world comes together despite its time zones and tries to start a conversation about how important taking a step back is for your mental health. This day has kicked off a week of being conscious of mental health issues and offering yourself for conversation.

With mental health issues affecting 1 in 5 Australians nationwide, it’s good that it has such a focus. It’s also good that there’s a somewhat open dialogue for the difficult conversations that can sometimes surround talking about mental illness. The aim of World Mental Health Day is to raise awareness about mental health issues that are faced by people worldwide, and also for people to take responsibility of their own mental health and well being by making a promise.

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On the Mental Health Australia website, they put forward the option to make a mental health promise on World Mental Health Day, and by you making this promise, it’s a clear sign that you’ve taken charge of your health and well being and therefore should try your hardest to stick to this promise. You can check out the promises here.

What’s interesting about the whole concept of the promises is that they’re not kept secret, like I initially thought. I was like ‘what on earth are they going to do with 15,777 promises made by people all over Australia about their mental health? Where are they going to put them?’

I was all for making a promise until I realised that it was going to be public. It almost feels a bit intrusive reading all of those people’s promises to themselves and what they’ve promised themselves to do in order to take charge of their mental health.

But the sentiment is there, and it’s working.

Did you make a promise? You can still make one if you’d like!