It’s Mental Health Awareness Month: Take Time to Prioritize Yourself

Let’s be real. The need to eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health awareness has reached a critical moment. There’s a lot of work to be done for us to move beyond taboos.

Mental Health Awareness Month has evolved since the National Association for Mental Health (now known as Mental Health America) rolled it out as a campaign in 1949. Part of what helped make this initiative evergreen was that the original toolkit of materials wasn’t just performative; it was designed with purpose, to empower other organizations interested in meaningful outreach activities in support of mental health awareness.

The initiative’s ability to create a dialogue unified people and organizations to build and improve resilient skills and behaviors. It was effective because it was actionable. The same applies in today’s post-pandemic world.

We believe that each person’s well-being is important to our company’s success. To participate in empowering organizations each May, meQuilibrium has some evolving traditions of its own. We’ve rolled out mental health awareness campaign materials to support our customers, spearheaded by Shakira MacLyons, VP of Customer Marketing at meQuilibrium.

“Mental health is top of mind for us every month, and every day, here at meQ,” CEO and Co-founder Jan Bruce stated. This Mental Health Awareness Month, we are also expanding our horizons to showcase our own culture and authenticity through personal stories shared across Linkedin. Our staff are sharing their mental health stories as a way to advance and normalize the conversation around mental health—look for them with #prioritizeyourself.

Mental health awareness is especially important for HR leaders, because they often focus first on the needs of everyone else rather than themselves. In a recent survey of 700 HR professionals, the overwhelm from work and burnout were deemed top challenges. That’s especially true because for the past two years, the role of HR leaders has been completely reshaped. They’ve been tasked with juggling changing health mandates, the rise of the remote workforce, and hybrid return to work, often with fewer people due to turnover. The very leaders we rely on to manage our workforce are also under pressure.

In a time of such great uncertainty, we all need to look after ourselves, and each other. It’s important to understand the implications behind the statistics that 41% of your people are struggling with anxiety, 39% are battling with stress, and 28% are feeling lonely and socially isolated. If we look at the traumas of the past couple years through a lens of emotional intelligence rather than just intellect, a key takeaway becomes clear: We’ve all been confronted with powerful realizations about the need for self-care, but through awareness and empathy, we can grow in new directions together, and replace the stigma surrounding mental health with compassion and support.

Mental Health Awareness Month is an important opportunity to further that understanding, but it’s something we should all be thinking about, year-round.

Connect with us on Linkedin or learn more about meQuilibrium and our mission to develop resilient organizations, one person at a time.