May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It covers the whole spectrum of mental health. Anxiety, Depression, Bipolar, ADD, Personality Disorder, Schizophrenia, Eating Disorders and Substance Abuse which is usually caused from mental health.

Self medicating is the leading cause of substance abuse. Mental health and abusing substances is a vicious circle. One that is almost impossible to get off. The hard part is realizing you have a problem and getting help. Nobody can force you to get help. If it doesn’t come from you then it will never work. But if you can find the strength to get clean from whatever substance it is, you can then get on the road to mental health recovery.

A little bit about Mental Health Month. It was actually created in 1949! 73 years ago someone decided to make May a month for Mental Health. I can only imagine how that went over. I mean it’s 2022 and mental health is still taboo to so many. So imagine every May trying to make it known to people who would turn a cheek because you just didn’t talk about those things. Hell, I guarantee most the people I know don’t even know that May is mental health awareness month.

After 73 years we are still so far behind. NAMI-National Alliance of Mental Illness is one of the biggest organizations for mental health and I didn’t know about them until probably 5 years ago. It is so important to end the stigma or taboo of mental health.

1 in 5 adults have some sort of mental illness. That means everyone who reads this either has a mental illness or knows someone with a mental illness. Stand up for yourself or a loved one! Become more educated. Support NAMI by donating your time or money. Or look into your local county mental health facility to see how you can help. Let’s not let another 73 years go by and mental health is still not on the front lines.

I’m not telling you who to vote for but look into the candidates and see if they support mental health. And if they don’t, write to them and tell them to get on board! We need our politicians to be just as involved with mental health as they are on silly bills that are a waste of time.

Please like or share this blog. The whole reason I write this blog is to reach people that need to help. So I ask you to please, please, please share my blogs. Especially this one. Thank you for all the support!