Mental Health Awareness Month

Its real core value has never been how many activities it completed or how many people it covered, but to provide an upright step to all those who are trapped in the prejudice of "I'm sorry to say I'm sorry."

When I was working as a resident social worker in a university last year, I didn’t hold those long lectures during the publicity month. I just placed a wooden mailbox painted in bright yellow at the entrance of the cafeteria, and hung a sign that read, “This is the mailbox where you can express your emotions. All questions will be answered anonymously.” The mailbox was ridiculously empty for the first three days, and we joked about it because the colors were too eye-catching and we were too embarrassed to come over. But on the morning of the fourth day, we opened the box and found seven or eight pieces of paper folded into small squares. The top note was crooked: "I failed the postgraduate entrance examination for World War II and stayed at home for half a month. My mother said every day that I had no future. Am I really not good at handling stress?" ”We posted the reply on the display board next to the mailbox, hiding all personal information, and just wrote, "You are just going through a difficult time, and this has nothing to do with coping with stress." In the next half month, the mailbox was full, and some students with social fears slipped notes into the cracks of our desk door when no one was around, asking whether it was necessary to register the full name to make an appointment in the psychological consultation room.

In fact, not only colleges and universities, but now whether it is companies or communities, when the awareness month is held, there are always people who complain that it is "too fake". The academic community itself has always had different opinions on the actual role of the awareness month. Researchers in the public health school have always advocated that "publicity is worse than implementation." Survey data from a certain province in 2023 showed that the proportion of people taking the initiative to ask for help did increase by 47% after the publicity month, but 60% of them did not receive sustained support after the first consultation. They feel that it is more practical to carry out ten publicity activities than to add two more free consultation stations and include psychological diagnosis and treatment in the scope of medical insurance reimbursement. But practitioners of the applied psychology school don’t see it this way: breaking the ice is the first step in itself. No matter how many workstations you have, some people don’t even know “I can see a counselor when I’m not in a good mood” and won’t take that step at all. I have been in contact with an Internet company before. In the first month when "emotional leave" was written into the attendance system, no one dared to take it. Everyone was afraid of being labeled as having "poor ability to withstand stress." Later, during the promotion month, they distributed keychains at the entrance of the cafeteria for a week with the message "Taking emotional leave is not laziness." In the third month, 17 employees took the initiative to apply for emotional leave. The longest one took three days in a row. After returning, the project completion efficiency increased by 20%.

I used to be on the side of the "pragmatic" side, and thought it would be better to hire two more consultants to do these fancy things, until I met the 60-year-old aunt when I was setting up a stall during the community promotion month last year. She walked around our stall three times, and finally came over holding the corner of her clothes and asked: "My wife has been gone for almost half a year, and I cry every time. Am I too small-minded?" ”She had never mentioned this matter to her children before. She was afraid of causing trouble to her children. She also felt that she was "pretentious at an old age". It was not until she saw the words on our display shelf that "continuing to be sad for more than two months is not pretentious, but that she needs to find someone to talk to" that she dared to come and talk to her. I chatted with her for more than 40 minutes that day. When she was leaving, she stuffed the free community consultation phone number we printed into her pocket and said, "It turns out I'm not abnormal." At that moment, I suddenly felt that even if the entire promotion month only helped this one person, it would still be worth it.

Of course, we have to admit that the publicity months in many places are indeed off track. Some find a half-assed lecturer to give a lecture and say, "Depression just makes it hard to think about it." This only increases everyone's sense of shame. ； Some will only print posters saying "You are the best" and "Come on", just like handing a person with a cold a sign saying "Drink more hot water" without even giving a cup, which makes people upset. But just because these formalities exist, the significance of the matter itself cannot be denied - after all, for many people who are trapped in self-denial, even just seeing the sentence "Your emotions are right" on the roadside may be the first step to pull them out of the quagmire.

To be honest, there is nothing grand about mental health. This year’s promotion month, if you see someone displaying a free pressure measurement QR code downstairs in the company, or the community bulletin board posts the opening hours of the street consultation room, don’t rush away or avoid it. Even if you stop and look at it for 30 seconds, you will know that “I have a place to go when I am sad.”