Today (January 25, 2017) is Mental Health Awareness Day, and this entire week is Mental Health Awareness Week. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, approximately 1 in 5 american adults suffer with some form of mental illness. But that’s not all, the same source finds that roughly 1 in 5 children in the U.S. suffer from or will develop a serious mental health condition (including anxiety, a mood, conduct, or behavior disorder). Mental illness is very real and extremely prevalent, however, a negative stigma surrounding the topic of mental illness continues to exist, which causes so many people to suffer in silence.
The point of Mental Health Awareness Week is to acknowledge that many people in our immediate families, social groups, workplaces, and communities suffer from mental illnesses, and to create an open and honest dialogue around mental illness to help end the stigma and to create a safe space for those who need help to be able to ask for it.
