When is Mental Health Day?

If it is the "National College and Middle School Student Mental Health Day" aimed at domestic college and high school students, it is fixed on May 25 every year. It is homophonic to "I love me". The core advocacy is to pay attention to one's own psychological state and learn to accept oneself.； If it is a mental health public awareness day for the global public, the often-called "World Mental Health Day" is October 10th every year. Currently, in domestic science popularization activities for the general public, this day is often called "International Mental Health Day".

When I first started volunteering for psychological science popularization in the past two years, I often confused these two dates. It was not until 2021 that I helped organize an event at a psychological center of a university. In mid-May, I began to save stall materials such as decompression pinch music and Fangshuren test drawing board. I went through the official documents to find out: 52 5 was jointly initiated and established by the School Department of the Youth League Central Committee and the National Student Federation in 2004. It was originally aimed at young people. The middle school to university stage is a critical period for personality formation and the pressure of entering school and employment. Choosing a day that is homophonic with "I love me" has a low memory threshold and is easy for students to accept. Oh, by the way, last year I came across a milk tea shop in a university town that was taking advantage of the 525 craze. Buying milk tea gave you a sticker with the slogan "Emotional stability is the greatest virtue." The people in line circled half a circle. Although it was marketing, it also showed that the concept of mental health is really infiltrating the lives of ordinary people.

In fact, there is no completely unified definition of "mental health day" in the industry, and there is even a lot of discussion. Some front-line consultants feel that there is no need to draw a sharp line between the two days: for ordinary people, it is a good thing to be able to notice their emotional problems through popular science at a certain point. When I was doing a charity clinic in the community on October 10 last year, I met an aunt who was passing by while shopping for groceries. She came over and asked if she had a heart problem because she had been feeling flustered and couldn't sleep well recently. After chatting for ten minutes, I found out that she had been taking her grandson around for more than half a year, and there was a backlog. There was no place to relieve her anxiety. Later, she was offered free psychological counseling in the community. Half a month later, she brought half a bag of oranges grown at home to express her gratitude, saying that she no longer had to carry the burden of "it's all small things at home that I'm embarrassed to talk about."

However, many researchers in the academic field feel that a clear distinction should be made. After all, the original intentions of the two days are originally different: 525 is more of a developmental psychological advocacy, encouraging everyone to actively pay attention to emotions and explore themselves, and is more suitable for activities on campus and in young communities.； World Mental Health Day on October 10 was initiated and established by the World Health Organization in 1992. From the beginning, it has been with the mission of eliminating the stigma of mental illness. Every year, there is a unified publicity theme. For example, the theme of 2023 is "Promoting children's mental health and jointly protecting a better future." It is more aimed at popularizing knowledge about the identification and rescue of severe mental disorders of all ages. Mixing names can easily obscure the core advocacy direction.

To be honest, it doesn’t really matter which day counts as “official mental health day”. When the 525 activities were held a few years ago, many students received the psychological manual and hurriedly stuffed it into the bottom of their schoolbags, for fear that others would see it and think there was "something wrong" with them. Now, the queue in front of the decompression activity booth can go half a circle around the basketball court. More and more students are actively asking how to make appointments for psychological counseling. Many Internet companies have included one day of "emotional leave" per month in their employee benefits. The changes are really visible to the naked eye. After all, you never need to wait for a specific point to take care of your emotions, just like you need to recharge your mobile phone after using it for a long time. If you don’t want to socialize today, you will cancel unnecessary gatherings. If you are tired from working overtime, you will order yourself a cake that you have been talking about for a long time. Even if you just sit by the window and idle for ten minutes, you are mentally recharging.