Mental Health Awareness Week - What is Mental Health? 🧠

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Each year, the Mental Health Foundation leads Mental Health Awareness Week. This year’s theme is “community” which is very fitting!

I’d like to begin this week with getting to the core of what Mental Health is, how it fits with our overall health, and how it impacts us all.

Mental, Physical, and Emotional health form the 3 pillars to your overall health.

Everybody has mental health. It involves our emotional, psychological, and social-wellbeing, and directly impacts how we think, feel, and act.

• Each year, 1 in 4 of us will experience a mental health problem in England.
• In any given week, 1 in 6 of us are experiencing a common mental health problem such as anxiety or depression.
• 1 in 5 people people have had suicidal thoughts over the course of their lifetime.

These are really sobering statistics. It really highlights the term “you’re not alone” when you see just how many of us are impacted. 💙

Mental wellbeing is a state that supports people in coping with every-day life, realising their abilities, learning and working well, and contributing to community. It underpins our ability to effectively function in daily activities, maintain healthy relationships, etc. Risks to our mental health can happen throughout life, but there are certain times when we’re particularly vulnerable, such-as early childhood which is a sensitive development period.

Exposure to environments such-as poverty, violence, inequality and environmental deprivation can also make us more vulnerable to mental health problems. As can individual psychological and behavioural factors like genetics and emotional skills.

Mental health is a very personal subject for me. After bottled up experiences finally broke me a few years ago, I’m on a journey of understanding. Linking how these things have impacted my behaviours (particularly the negative ones) and working to improve my mental health and overall wellbeing. Making peace with knowing some effects of these experiences will never leave me, and some battles will always be there. But knowing they’ll get a little easier with every positive step taken gives me a lot of hope. A few years ago, I wouldn’t even be able to allow myself to acknowledge, let alone share this. I know that so many others are on this journey too. We’ve got this! 💪

If you'd like to dig deeper into understanding mental health, I've added a few links that might be helpful:

• Minds Mental Health Problems Introduction
• Understanding Mental Health: Essential Information For Everyone
• Mental health - World Health Organization

WhatThe

Since 2001, the Mental Health Foundation has been leading Mental Health Awareness Week - bringing the UK together to focus on getting good mental health. This year, the week takes place from 12 to 18 May 2025 and the theme is 'community'.

We're calling for urgent reform

We're calling on the government for urgent reform to protect young people’s mental health from online harm.

Without community, there’s no mental health. We can’t afford to ignore it

Thriving communities support good mental health, but poverty, inequality, and underinvestment have eroded them. We urge government action to rebuild communities and prevent mental ill-health through systemic change.

Stand up for our communities

This Mental Health Awareness Week we’re celebrating the ways that communities protect our mental health. But, our communities are in danger. Recent cuts to welfare are a disaster to the ability of communities to be spaces of safety, care, and support. We must fight for our communities.