#thestigma

Talk about 'mental health,' talk about how you feel. Tap into your thoughts, into your feelings, because they matter. How many of you really talk about mental health? Like disability, mental health also carries a stigma.

But how many of you see mental health as an issue, or think about your mental health? Mental health is usually something someone else deals with, it’s not something you may recognise for us, or something to think about.

In the pandemic we're largely ignoring mental health and now the pandemic has been relegated, we're not thinking about it or talking about it at all. I talk about it, I always talk about it.

In the pandemic, we’ve seen suffering on a massive scale, we’ve lost loved ones to Covid, of we’ve caught Covid ourselves; we've grappled with the pandemic, but mental health is still not something to speak about.

Two years in, and we’re continuing to make a polite conscious decision not to talk about mental health. Mental health is an embarrassment, it’s not popular, it’s an inconvenience, and it's still there.

It doesn't leave until you show it the door. But whichever way you see mental health, it’s there waiting in the wings, waiting to pounce. Mental health in the pandemic has touched everyone.

Through my blog, I’ve made talking about mental health an art form, fashionable. I’ve brought it into limelight and on to the radar, for everyone to read and capitalise on. But that’s not enough, because mental health hits and continues to hit, until we deal with it.

Positive mental health Is something you need to continue to capitalise on if you haven’t done already. It’s something to talk about, it needs to be on the radar, it’s something you should continue to work on. It's something we should all work on.

Mental health will hit, it hits, when you’re thinking about the past, or you’re dealing with something in your past, dealing with a multitude of experiences, anything that changes how you feel, means you’re dealing with mental health.