EDITORIAL - The holidays and mental health

As per a report in Philstar.com last Friday, the Department of Health reported that a total of 451 calls were made to the National Center for Mental Health (NCMH) over that past week.

The calls were made through the NCMH hotline 1553 from December 21 to 26. Most came on December 23, and were primarily from young adults, most of them female, aged 18 to 30.

The report said that among the main reasons why they called was anxiety and depressive symptoms, love and relationships issues, and family problems.

The report also said the surge in calls isn’t new to the NCMH, with 7,189 suicide-related calls for the first nine months of the year.

The holiday season is an especially hard time for those who don’t have it “all together”, those who are facing relationship issues, those experiencing personal problems, those who cannot be with friends and loved ones, and those just prone to depression.

This is because it’s supposed to be a festive season and everyone is supposed to be happy, or last least look happy in public or in social media. But we all know this isn’t always the case.

Someone might be surrounded by many people but still feel alone. Someone may look happy in social media, but actually feel differently in real life. Someone’s relationship with his or her significant other might look perfect to those looking from outside, but be totally different for insiders who know the truth.

The surge in calls to the NCMH at least signifies that many, especially among the young adults, are now aware of mental health issues, and that they aren’t afraid to ask for help or just reach out to someone else.

For the longest time there has always been this stigma surrounding mental health. To admit having mental health issues was always associated with weakness. Even just talking about it was taboo, especially for those expected to assume strong leadership roles whether in the family or in their workplace.

We should be happy this attitude is slowly changing. From a topic once shunned, more and more are realizing that it’s an issue that needs to be addressed. This goes without saying we should also be more encouraging with those who want to deal with their mental health issues, perhaps including ourselves.