World Mental Health Day

World Mental Health Day (WMHD) is a day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy held on 10 October to raise public awareness of mental health issues worldwide.  Thank you for helping us make National Mental Health Week 2012 such a success! The Mental Health Council of Australia, its members and staff have been overwhelmed by the positive response to this year’s activities. Thanks must go to our Sponsors and Patrons for their generosity and support this year, as well as to all those Australians who joined the national conversation.

We have started many important conversations this year and made many new friends of mental health, lets keep them going over the year ahead! For more information on our work, please visit the MHCA website. Follow the MHCA on Twitter and Facebook.

Highlights of this year’s National Mental Health Week

Minister for Mental Health, Mark Butler, hosted the official launch of WMHD on 10/10 at a Parliamentary Breakfast in Canberra. We used the occasion to launch our Patrons’ community service announcements including Peter Overton’s video message.

Ms Jessica Rowe delivered the annual Grace Groom Oration in Canberra to an audience of  MHCA Members and friends (including members of Grace’s family) who gathered from across Australia to honour Grace’s memory and to celebrate Jessica Rowe’s journey of hope.  We laughed and cried as Jessica invited us in to her family story and found hope as Jessica told us that she was “mental and proud of it!”

At the first ever Council of Non-Government Organisations (CONGO) on Mental Health, ninety leading mental health organisations committed to developing common goals for mental health, and to finding new ways of collaborating together to ensure Australia is on track to deliver the best mental health system in the world.

Over 3,500 Australians viewed our Event Map to check out activities happening across the country and we were overwhelmed with stunning and creative entries in this year’s WMHD Photo Competition. The winners have now been announced and you can review the top entries by visiting our WMHD Photo Competition Facebook page (and friending us if you have not already done so!)

MHCA Youth Ambassador Samara Weaving joined us for the Sydney screening of the new PJ Hogan and Toni Collette movie “Mental” - a celebration of life, hope and diversity which challenges many perceptions of mental health and mental illness and encourages discussion about a subject that has been taboo for so long.  In the lead up to WMHD Samara led our twitter campaign which this year reached well over 1,000,000 people, inviting them to participate in the national conversation about mental health. Three hundred of our friends also joined us for the Canberra screening of the film.