Mental Health Day 2017: How far have we come in addressing mental health issues?

The world is fast inching towards more numbers of deeply ingrained issues in the human brain that affects overall human functioning. Depression, anxiety disorders and other mental health issues have been taking the human minds in its shackles at a rapid rate and organizations and the society are not able to address them effectively either. Globally, it causes a loss of a trillion dollars in productivity every year according to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO).
WHO marks October 10 as the Mental Health Day, to address mental health issues and make more and more people aware of the disorders, the symptoms, causes and consequences of not getting timely attention. There have been several apps that have come up to address these issues but reports suggest not all are useful enough.
The Guardian suggests some of the apps like ChillPanda, Catch It and SilverCloud among others as apps that try to analyze one’s mood, or form a community where people with mental health issues can come together online and discuss their issues in the community to arrive to some helpful resolutions. Though they may help in addressing stress and depression, for more complicated mental health issues like bipolar disorder or a mix of depression and anxiety disorders, the appropriate apps may be a tough nut to crack, reports the leading daily.
A leading mental health charity organization, Mind that is located in United Kingdom helps people understand the mental illnesses better, with campaigns to raise awareness and also reportedly has its own mental health app, Elefriends.
Despite these efforts, reports state that studies reveal 85 percent of employees in UK do not feel confident and secure to talk about their mental health issues and the stress that they face in their day-to-day lives at the workplace.

Meanwhile, especially since these diseases are ever-growing in today’s world, it is important to know what the common mental health issues are, how to know if one is suffering with these illnesses and ways to tackle them. Google has launched a depression screening test while there are also helplines, support systems, rehabilitation groups, counselling psychologists, mental health therapists and employee assistance programs that can come to one’s aid.

However, firstly, there needs to be a prevailing understanding that mental health issues cannot vanish with yoga and positive thinking as it is not in one’s head. It is and should be considered at par with any physical illness and deserves to be tackled with a lot of support and affection. When one can reach out for help without being judged and labelled differently, will the painful WHO statistic of ‘one in four people in the world affected with a mental health disorder at some point in their lives’ will see some resolution in the future.

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