For convenience sake our lives usually follow the sun's traverse. The majority of events associated with World Mental Health Day will take place during office hours and early evening.
I am looking forward to a local event in Leyland, Lancashire on Monday, which includes speed dating. This will provide that 10-15 minute opportunity to share and obtain information about other services and people involved in local mental health care. The agenda looks excellent and includes the active participation of carers and service users.
So, what of World Mental Health 'Day'?
Mental health - like all health and social care is a 24 hour affair. How often do we forget this? Of all the care (knowledge) domains I write about here, mental health remains the 'silent one'. If you have had worries, anxiety and much more besides you know full well there are actually 24 hours in a day and the silence is not because 'mental health' sleeps. So 'Day' is quite apposite in shedding light on what remains a poorly understood and stigmatised aspect of health care and our lives. Comprising all four declared domains and uncertainty - the spiritual domain is not referred to in Hodges' model explicitly and yet in our day-to-day existence spiritual matters figure in lives just begun, journeys ongoing and lives at an end and people remembered. Whether we practice a religion, follow a belief there is no escape from news that relates to religion. Strange then: not listed in Hodges' model and yet more evident and prevalent than mental health it seems. In my career I have noticed how religion and mental health can be very uncomfortable companions for some individuals. One exacerbating or being the cause of problems in the other. By the same, or maybe a different token, religion is also a great source of comfort, solace, affirmation, peace and reconciliation for many and a crucial resource through the many people who work under the auspices of the World's religions.
I have tried to catch this 'relationship' in my categorization of links in the INTER - INTRAPERSONAL domain which includes:
Psychology, Mental Health, Therapies, with Philosophy, Ethics, Ideas, Context, Creativity, Theology and Inter-Transdisciplinary resources.
So wherever you are, I hope you find peace especially through this day and night, whether or however you illuminate your mind, heart and soul.
Image source: http://www.daily-tangents.com/ImageCat/ErthMoon/
and NHS various.
