The World Health Organisation has this to say about World Mental Health Day:

This year’s World Mental Health Day, on 10 October, comes at a time when our daily lives have changed considerably as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The past months have brought many challenges: for health-care workers, providing care in difficult circumstances, going to work fearful of bringing COVID-19 home with them; for students, adapting to taking classes from home, with little contact with teachers and friends, and anxious about their futures; for workers whose livelihoods are threatened; for the vast number of people caught in poverty or in fragile humanitarian settings with extremely limited protection from COVID-19; and for people with mental health conditions, many experiencing even greater social isolation than before. And this is to say nothing of managing the grief of losing a loved one, sometimes without being able to say goodbye.

The economic consequences of the pandemic are already being felt, as companies let staff go in an effort to save their businesses, or indeed shut down completely.

Given past experience of emergencies, it is expected that the need for mental health and psychosocial support will substantially increase in the coming months and years. Investment in mental health programmes at the national and international levels, which have already suffered from years of chronic underfunding, is now more important than it has ever been.

This is why the goal of this year’s World Mental Health Day campaign is increased investment in mental health.

Put simply, World Mental Health Day is an opportunity for us all to have positive and productive conversations with each other . These are discussions that could and should happen everyday, but today is an opportunity to educate yourselves on how easy it is to have these discussions so that you can continue to do so moving forward.

To celebrate, the young people working on Platfform4YP have all made short videos addressing a specific question that means something to them! Find these on our Vimeo page alongside other videos here! These videos are meant to act as springboards and platforms for discussion so please take what you learn from them and utilise it in your everyday life to destigmatise mental health for all!