Time to Talk 2025 – Let’s Talk About Mental Health

Content Warning – The following post discusses themes surrounding mental illness, low mood, and anxiety.

What is Mental Health? 

In my lifetime, I have had a front row seat as attitudes towards mental health have evolved in society.

For a long time, there were not many open discussions around what ‘mental health’ really was. If someone struggled, it was done behind closed doors and often only talked about in hindsight.

It took me well into my teen years to understand that mental health is just the term of our mental wellbeing – that each of us will have a various state, with some having issues and others maybe not. Sometimes its genetics, or reactionary given the situations life puts us in.

Still, there was a silent suggestion whenever the topic was mentioned – that to struggle with your mental health was some sort of personal failure.

It took me far too long to realise that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Am I Allowed to Struggle?
I started experiencing anxiety and depression in my mid-teens, as I fear many of us do. It was always explained away as some other passing factor; hormones, being a moody teenager, or just not thinking positively.

Be it from family or health professionals, it seemed to be that people thought I was trying hard enough to combat low mood or overwhelming anxiety. That I didn’t have ‘enough of a reason’ to experience depression and couldn’t be anxious when I was able to appear confident.

For a while, that coloured my experience with mental illness.

I didn’t want to be thought of us negative or ungrateful, especially when people often came to me to discuss their own issues. How could I be expected to help anyone, if they really knew what I was dealing with?

Mental Health – we’ve ALL got it!
The truth is that every one of us has a state of mental health, just as we do physical health. We will each have different needs to maintain and nurture its condition. It is not, and has never been, an indication of how hard we’re trying or who we are as a person.

Sometimes, it is just the way we are wired.

People have often associated my depression as a reaction to life as a disabled woman when my mental health issues began long before I first got sick.
Let’s make one thing clear – I have a mental illness, and a physical illness. The two are not correlated. I’m not depressed because I’m disabled. I have depression because that’s how I’m clinically predisposed.

I will no longer carry any shame with me because of the way my brain and body were made.

It’s Time to Talk
I wish I could have had the strength to open up about my mental health years ago. Because that what it takes, at its core; strength. How else could you expect to describe being vulnerable in a way that brings others a sense of comfort?

What I have learned is that there actually is always someone who is not only willing to listen, but open to trying to understand. The most powerful and important thing we have in this life is our sense of connection – and we cannot hope to do that unless we take the Time to Talk.

In a world where anyone can share their thoughts and feelings aloud, sometimes we forget to check in with ourselves on how we’re really doing. Take the time today to be honest, with both you and others.

You never know who you could help, just by sharing your story.

Resources:
You are never alone. Whatever you are going through, there are people that want to support you in your time of need. Please, don’t hesitate to reach out.

The Time To Talk Website: Time To Talk Day – Time To Talk Day 

Mind: Information and support – Mind 

Samaritans: Samaritans | Every life lost to suicide is a tragedy | Here to listen