Do we still need Mental Health Awareness Week?

Wearing this is good for my mental health

Happy Mental Health Awareness Week! If ‘happy’ is the appropriate word.

The concept of mental health has been on something of a rollercoaster over the past 20 years. Back in the 2000s, when I got my first job as an assistant on Marie Claire, the only context in which mental health was mentioned was in terms of extremes. You had to have an actual nervous breakdown before anyone would acknowledge their mental health might need some attention. A serial killer, or a homeless person talking to themselves in a doorway, had ‘mental health issues’. The rest of us were fine, thanks. Yes, we were all stressed, but that was the sign of a busy and successful life.

In 2009, I was working at Elle, and we did a feature about anxiety when nobody else was talking about it. It was taboo.

Now the pendulum has swung the other way and everyone is talking about their anxiety, s…