The 'Mighty' Way We're Celebrating Mental Health Awareness Month

When I was tasked to come up with what The Mighty would do for Mental Health Awareness Month this May, to be honest, I went into the brainstorming process pretty cynically. Every month is mental health awareness month for people in the “mental health world,” and I didn’t want to create a campaign just to create a campaign. I was frustrated and wanted to make sure we were bringing something new to the table.

I then quickly realized I didn’t need to create another hashtag… I could actually take advantage of The Mighty’s biggest strength: our voices. The people. I wanted someone with a different perspective, with a different background, to go live on the Mental Health on The Mighty Facebook page every day in May to show how diverse and amazing and real our community is.

That’s what driving our 2017 Mental Health Awareness Month campaign: 31 Days of Voices.

Every Monday this month, we’ll post a weekly schedule so you know who’s on the lineup and what topics they’ll be covering. Then, you’ll be able to listen as each person tells their story and ask any questions you have about their triumphs and struggles and how they relate to your own. We’re trying to represent as much diversity and as many perspectives as we can this month, so if by May 31st you don’t see a perspective that represents your own, let us know by emailing mentalhealth@themighty.com, and we’ll do better next year. Actually — why wait that long? We’ll do better next month. The mental health community isn’t homogenous in race, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation or in our relationships to our mental illnesses — so our campaigns shouldn’t be either. 

Happy Mental Health Awareness Month, and thanks for choosing to spend it with us.