World Mental Health Day - 2019

"Caring for the mind is equally important as caring for the body."

World Mental Health Day is the day for awareness and global mental health education. Every year World Mental Health Day is celebrated on 10 October, the first time being the year 1992 at the initiative of the World Federation for Mental Health. On this day thousands of supporters all over the globe come together to celebrate the awareness program to bring attention to mental illness and its effect on people. The theme as decided by the Federation on World Mental Health Day is “suicide prevention”. So, focus on suicide prevention is the main aim of this day.

Even if suicidal behavior has existed all the time, but, due to several complex factors, it has gradually increased from the past few decades all over the world. Focus on suicide prevention has attracted the interest of most fields of study and that is why the World Health Organization (WHO), has made focus on suicide prevention a priority issue this year. As per WHO, in a year more than 5,00,000 die by suicide. It is considered to be one of the principal causes of death among people between 15 to 29 years old.

Due to this, the WHO has considered the focus on suicide prevention to be of utmost importance and promote the mental health of people all over the world. The focus on suicide prevention has been made the theme of World Mental Health Day in 2019 is to attract the awareness of governments to make the issue a priority in public health agendas globally. World Mental Health Day is celebrated in more than 100 countries over the world. The activities on the World Mental Health Day include:

·         The official signing of the World Mental Health Day proclamation

·         Distribution of research papers and providing educational lectures on mental health illness

·         Giving awards to the organizations making a significant contribution to improving mental health issues.

WHO statistics showed that almost about 160 million people suffer from depression all over the world, which is one kind of mental disorder. The mental disorder affects nearly 10%  of the world’s population which often leads to people to commit suicide. With the focus on suicide prevention, on World Mental Health Day, the WHO aims to promote the mental health of the people over the globe, so that not a single life is lost because of mental disorder.