13 Reasons We Must Talk About Mental Health
By: Priyanka Joshi Nair
Tags: Stigma, Mental Health Awareness, Taboo, Social Change, Self-awareness

Are you looking for reasons we must talk about mental health? Aren’t we all going through it personally or around us already?

Although this year is publicly termed as the worst of all, this year 2020 has been a successful curtain-raiser to give us a sneak peek around the mental health requirements of an individual and how it can adversely affect the global economy in the long run.

In this blog, I am going to share a few reasons that will force you to think about the importance of good mental health.

13 Reasons We Must Talk About Mental Health

In our world, we need reasons, logic, and validations to support what we are saying, to believe something either we must go through it or something huge should happen, empathy and compassion quotient has gone off to slumber.

We talk a lot about how our sugar level has increased, how we are on a diet to lose weight, how we are taking medicines to keep our blood pressure under control, but we never talk about our exhaustion, fatigue, burnout.

We hardly understand the fact that mental health is as important as physical health, so here I am trying to share a few reasons we must talk about mental health and what might happen if we keep ignoring it.

1.) It is NORMAL to go through it

2.) It affects you physically

3.) It affects your productivity

4.) It affects your relationships

5.) It affects your self-worth

6.) It makes you feel left-out

7.) It makes you doubt yourself

8.) It affects your self-image

9.) It makes you think you are alone

10.) It makes you feel ashamed

11.) It makes you feel guilty

12.) It isolates you

13.) It doesn’t let you seek help

1.) It is NORMAL to go through it

2.) It affects you physically

One of the most important reasons we must talk about mental health is to understand that going through stress, depression, anxiety or any form of mental illness is normal. Although people casually term them abnormal or odd or a misfit in society, this very stigma and shame attached to mental illness is the root cause of its elevation.

3.) It affects your productivity

Yes, it does, many mental illness conditions show physical symptoms and if not taken timely care of, it starts affecting your health. Have you ever gone through rapid-heart palpitation, heavy breathing, or an upset stomach just when someone argued with you, or when you sense something is going to happen? Introspect.

4.) It affects your relationships

With the continued stressful condition, and not being able to acknowledge what is going inside you might affect your outer world. Your whole day, your work, and productivity is based on your mood and mindset. You could have a super productive day just when you are full of energy and when you feel motivated or you can sulk and crib about everything when you are in your lowest energy levels, one of the other crucial reasons we must talk about mental health.

5.) It affects your self-worth

Like work, it affects your relationships as well. Relationship with your spouses, your children, parents, and friends. Your emotional unavailability for them can cause stress to them as well plus if you are dealing with anxiety it might become difficult for your partner to deal with you. If you are stressed you might take out the frustration on your kids.

6.) It makes you feel left-out

It doesn’t make you feel good about yourself. It makes you feel worthless, we might encounter these feelings once in a while under different circumstances but if this state becomes a habit then we must be aware, it is very unhealthy for our health.

7.) It makes you doubt yourself

Because you don’t feel comfortable around anyone when you are going through mental stress, you feel you are the only one going through it and everyone else is happy and living a good life, you feel left out in conversations, you feel left-out even in the public gatherings and among friends.

8.) It affects your self-image

Just like it makes you question your self-worth, it puts you in the zone of self-doubt, where you doubt everything you say and everything you do. It makes you fall for the never-ending mental arguments resulting in nothing, going nowhere, and only affecting your inner peace.

9.) It makes you think you are alone

One of the other critical reasons we must talk about mental health. Just when you begin to doubt yourself, you question your capabilities, and with every decision you make you also doubt your mental image of self i.e is your self-image. You feel less confident, it lowers your self-esteem and you don’t feel the way you use to feel when you were in your happiest state.

10.) It makes you feel ashamed

Just because you feel sad, lonely, and less-accomplished you feel you are alone and it is only you who is going through it. For some people, it also becomes like it's the world against them and they are all alone fighting to survive each day.

11.) It makes you feel guilty

The stigmas and shame attached to it make you feel ashamed of what you are going through, you feel dejected. You curse yourself for being in such a condition and feel helpless, but it is not you, it is the perception about mental health care in our world, the less sensitization and lack of awareness has never included people with mental illnesses and have only made it hard for them.

12.) It isolates you

The series of self-doubt and overthinking makes you a big-time procrastinator and then leaves you feeling guilty too. You want to do so many things but just because your mental health is not in a good state you fail to do it and then that constant guilt of not being able to do things makes you restless.

13.) It doesn’t let you seek help

When you feel alone, when you feel you are not worth it, the world looks like a place you don’t belong to. You don’t feel welcome anywhere, people don’t relate to you and you hardly find anyone understanding your state of mind and acting according to it, hence you prefer staying alone and isolation helps you to escape from all the judgmental and labels.

The stigmas, stereotypes, shame, and lack of awareness don’t let you seek professional help, even when your family members see you, they don’t feel the need of seeking a counselor which ultimately worsen your situation.

So with this list of the reasons we must talk about mental health, I hope you understood the importance of talking about it. You always need someone to talk to, you always need to vent out, you always need closure, maybe not in the way you are seeking but in some or the other way find that closure and seek that help. Take full control of your life. Rise up!

To conclude, I would say that just because of the lack of awareness people suffer and they suffer big-time. With all the false perceptions, self-diagnosis, we’re already glorifying mental illnesses like OCD, anxiety in an inappropriate manner, so please be mindful of your surrounding, your emotions, and feelings and take the necessary steps.

Priyanka Nair is the author of 26 Days 26 Ways for a Happier you and Ardhaviram. An NLP practitioner and Founder of Sanity Daily, helping you prioritize your mental health. Let’s build a happy community.

Originally published at https://sanitydaily.com on December 10, 2020.