Mental Health Day: Health Min stresses on need to end stigma, urges people to come forward

On the occasion of the World Mental Health Day 2020, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan stressed on the need to remove the stigma surrounding mental illness. The Health Minister also revealed that the Centre had been facilitating the provision of mental health services up to district level, urging people who were in need of help, to come forward without fear and seek help.

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World Mental Health Day 2020

World Mental Health Day 2020 is observed on October 10 every year. The day was first coined in 1992 when the World Federation for Mental Health’s Deputy Secretary-General Richard Hunter felt the need to raise the topic in everyone’s life. The first theme was started in the year 1994.

The theme for this year is 'Mental Health for All: Greater Investment – Greater Access'. Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, everyone has experienced a considerable change in their lifestyle. The past few months have brought various challenges for healthcare workers, students, teachers, and those in poverty. Moreover, people with mental health conditions have faced even higher social isolation than before. The need for World Mental Health Day theme in 2020 is to reach out to people who have lost and lived on through the global pandemic crises. 

“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," said the World Health Organisation (WHO) in a written statement. 

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