World Mental Health Day
Jonathan Gabay
Senior Lecturer (Fellow) @ CIM | AI Marketing Expert | Author | Journalist
#globalmentalhealthday #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness. #Worldmentalhealthday
Today, we come together to mark World Mental Health Day.
Each of us knows or has heard of someone touched by mental health challenges.
Perhaps you or someone close has faced it head-on.
The world is at a precarious place and time.
Threats of climate change, housing, pollution, resource depletion, political instability, and job insecurity leave an entire generation with a sense of inescapable desperation.
Too often, dire desperation calls for desperate, often violent 'survival' tactics.
Older generations who've given so much sometimes find their worth undervalued or overlooked entirely.
The heart-wrenching events in Ukraine and utterly outrageous acts of rape, torture, abduction, and murder against Israelis by cowardly terrorists, bring daily grim realities to our smart devices and television screens.
Beyond their immediate traumas, the long-term psychological impacts on innocent civilians and legally entitled defenders of their country will be profound and long-lasting.
Inevitably, such events shake belief in a united, compassionate society.
On a related note, the rising antisemitic acts witnessed in cities globally remind us that presumed unity can be as shallow as marketed virtue signalling.
Hate cuts the fabric of united civility.
From my home in the UK, the gap between us feels wider than ever. People from all walks of life, whether working class or middle class, are faced with genuine existential angst about the future.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Mental health services are overwhelmed. Treatment lists are measured in years rather than months, let alone weeks.
Completed suicides remain far too high. Cases of depression and anxiety, or conditions like bipolar and schizophrenia, have swollen to the point that services are stretched unbearably thin to provide support.
Psychiatric clinicians are left with few immediate options other than to cosh patients chemically.
Once pressure for beds becomes too great, many patients are handed over to social housing. This exacerbates problems. With nowhere to go other than to return to wards, the cycle of hopelessness perpetuates. Cramped prison cells close in when there is neither a ward bed nor social housing.
Families and friends often bear the brunt of providing a safety net for those in crisis. But as everyday pressures increase, more and more individuals are abandoned in mental health facilities, forgotten by those who once held them dear.
In media and marketing, the constant barrage of idealised lives and standards on social media makes many feel inadequate or out of place.
I am attaching two short films that shed light on these issues.
One highlights the tragic abandonment in mental wards.
The other explores marketing banality and its potential mental health dangers.
I encourage you to watch and share.
At some point, many of us will encounter challenging mental health moments.
I hope and pray that if that should sadly happen, you will be surrounded by genuine people who are understanding and appreciative of you being you – human.
Stay connected. Stay compassionate. 💙