The Question is Why Raising Mental Health Awareness is a Must.Do you know how many mental disorders there are? Can you make a quick guess? I presume you cannot. Because the term ‘mental health’ is devalued all over the world. There are over 200 mental illnesses that humans suffer from, among which, depression and anxiety are the most common ones.
Research says that teenagers are more prone to suffering from mental disorders than people from any other age group. 21.4% of teenagers experience severe mental illness at some point during their teen years. Then why do we not take mental health seriously?
On average, one person dies from suicide every 40 seconds somewhere in the world. Therefore, it is high time we started raising mental health awareness among people in our country. We must let our teenagers know that if they ever feel mentally or emotionally unwell, there are always professionals they can seek help from.
Kaan Pete Roi (KPR), Bangladesh’s first emotional support helpline is doing a great job in raising mental health awareness all over the country. However, we need many more of these helplines. We need to have more students studying in the department of Psychology. We need to have more doctors specializing in Psychiatry. Because whether or not we like to admit it, mental health is even more important than physical health, as unlike the latter, its symptoms are noticeable to the sufferers only.
