Mental Health Awareness: Choose You

By now, many of us have heard the term self-care. And while that is crucial, overall mental health awareness encompasses not just us, but our heritage and legacies. The time to have conversations about our family histories and mental health is needed now. The fragility of sending our sons and daughters away to colleges, the military, or the workforce without having that talk about addiction, drinks being laced, diagnosis of schizophrenia prevalence in males during their early 20s, sexuality, and sexual assaults cannot be ignored. When you choose yourself, you set the tone by not being afraid or in denial, about the warning signs, and symptoms, and when to ask for help and empower others to do the same.

Soul Food, the movie, depicts this close-knit African American family filled with not-so-secret, family secrets. The uncle in the backroom self-isolates and gets his food by his relatives placing it by the door. The promiscuous niece who sexes her cousin’s husband without even a blink of hesitation or guilt prances into their lives. Two of the sisters slept with the same guy, he married one of them, while the other became a successful lawyer who threw it in their face every chance she had. The one he did marry, bore him a son who presented as sad. The point I am making is that there is a strong possibility a mental illness diagnosis was missed. 

In many families and cultures, family members diagnosed with a mental illness are often shunned or isolated. Those families are absent from family gatherings, the communication decreases, and in worse case scenarios, the announcement comes that so and so is no longer here.

In a country, with 333.3 million people, how is it that mental health awareness is designated a month— thirty-one days to be exact? History will reflect a nation that at one time, put people away, lobotomized their brains, and had an opioid crisis created by the very same people who were supposed to help them.

I implore women to take the lead, not by carrying this burden alone in secret, or cloaked in shame, but through legislation, advocacy, and a movement so strong, so big, and so powerful that every state, and every community, inner city, suburb, and rural will have access to programs that address mental health—not for profit, but for the betterment of society.

We must no longer sit idly and wait for a man to tell us what to do. Intuitively, we know what must be done, and the time to do so is now. Choose mental wellness. Seek help if you need it. If you are fortunate enough not to have a diagnosis, instead of making the lives of other women more difficult who suffer from mental illness, be an action ally. Create safe spaces for all women to feel accepted rather than crumble into pieces while suffering alone. It starts by choosing you.