Advocates raise awareness on World Mental Health Day

And October 10 is no different. In honour of World Mental Health Day, local mental wellness groups are pushing for more awareness around mental health locally.

“Mental health and mental wellbeing is something that we all have, whether you’re currently struggling with it or you’re not,” Interim Director of Community Services for the Kamloops Y, Jenna Nickle explained. “There is not a level of need or struggle that you have to be experiencing to get support.”

Kamloops has multiple options when it comes to reaching out about mental health, including Y Mind at the John Tod Centre. Each of the seven-week sessions is created with different age groups in mind and explores different areas around mental health.

“Our mind group specifically are for mild to moderate populations, and that means that you can have really mild anxiety and still really benefit from getting support,” Nickle said. “That’s something that I think is really important to talk about on World Mental Health Day.”

This year’s theme of World Mental Health Day is ‘Mental Health is a Universal Human Right,” a theme some believe needs to be highlighted every day.

“People shouldn’t be refused service because of a mental health issue, or people’s physical health shouldn’t be more important than their mental health,” Haywood-Farmer said. “And to really create opportunities for people to gain knowledge and awareness and acceptance.”

Haywood-Farmer hopes Canadians start to look at mental health a little differently.

“I guess my biggest hope is that people gain a greater understanding for mental health issues and none of us are immune,” she said.

by Sydney Chisholm

Advocates raise awareness on World Mental Health Day

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