World Mental Health Day Campaign

Mental health is an important issue in India. Creating awareness about mental health issues amongst the youth is the need of the hour. Suicide is the leading cause of death amongst Indian youth. The primary cause of this is the lack of awareness and stigma surrounding mental health. People are unable to access mental health care for the fear of being judged by people around. This leads to these issues getting worse and leading to other issues. In some cases it drives people to the extent of taking their own lives. Proper care and access to professional counselling could help people overcome these issues and carry on with their normal lives.

October 10th is celebrated as World Mental Health Day every year. This year, we at LonePack intend to conduct a host of programmes in the run up to and after this day aimed towards creating awareness and starting a dialog on mental health. We will be collaborating with cultural fests, symposiums and various other events at colleges to conduct workshops and seminars about the importance of mental health. We are collaborating with Teen Mental Health, a Canadian organization, to adapt a high school curriculum on mental health issues . We intend to complete this and conduct sessions at school across Chennai and Tamil Nadu. The intention is to ensure that we are able to educate and introduce students to mental health right from school. We will also be running various social media campaigns in the run up to World Mental Health Day. One such campaign would be reaching out to influencers in various fields to talk about mental health and what it means to them and share on social media. Other people would be encouraged to join the conversation online, thus creating a dialog that reaches common people.

Through our campaigns, we would be reaching about 5000 people in the age groups of 12 to 25 and creating awareness about mental health. This is the demographic that would be future of India and also most susceptible to face mental health issues. Our efforts would be to equip them to identify when they or people around them are going through a tough time or are facing issues; to reach out and get help from their support system or professionals; to learn more about mental health and engage in conversations in their community and peer groups. This would trigger a network effect reaching a wider audience in the demographic. Such an initiatives would be a stepping stone towards triggering a positive change in our society.