World Mental Health Day has been recognised on 10th October by the World Health Organisation for over 70 years, with the aim of ensuring that mental health is treated on a par with physical health 🧠

As well as being a chance to talk about mental health in general, the day also encourages individuals to call on national and local government to prioritise reducing the factors known to pose a risk to people’s mental health, enhancing those known to protect it and creating the conditions needed for people to thrive.

The theme of 2022’s World Mental Health Day, set by the World Federation for Mental Health, is ‘Make mental health and wellbeing for all a global priority’ 🌏

In recognition of this important day, we have made four articles from the archives of our publishing partners free to read:

New Internationalist ‘A Healthy Mind in a Healthy Society’ (May 2012)

“Both the promotion of mental health and the recovery from mental illness need to happen at a social level.”

The May 2012 issue of New Internationalist reports both on the vast unexplored area of promise for our mental health beyond pills and therapy, as well as the need to make recovery from mental illness a social concern.

Read the article, p14–19, here.

Positive News ‘Crazy Talk’ (Issue 94, Jul — Sep 2018)

“Nine out of 10 people with mental health conditions say the stigma attached to their issue has a negative impact on their life.”

The Portrait Project Crazy Talk, by London-based photographer Kay Lockett, explores how the language we use perpetuates this stigma by pairing people who have a history of mental illness with still life images of food (including coconuts, cracked eggs and bananas!). Find out more about the project in Issue 94 of Positive News.

Read the article, p67–68, here.

BBC Science Focus ‘I Still Remember The Day My Brain Broke’ October 2017

“By trying to control my thoughts, I only made them worse. If someone tells you not to think of a pink elephant, you’ll immediately have pink elephants stampeding through your head.”

James Lloyd can vividly remember the day in his early teens when a ‘switch flicked’ inside his brain and his battle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder began. Read about his battle with a devastating but little-known form of this mental disorder in the October 2017 issue of BBC Science Focus.

Read the article, p60–67, here.

The Biologist ‘Mind-Blowing Research’ (Autumn 2021)

“What psychedelics do is break down the existing modes of thinking. So people become more interested in what’s outside rather than what’s inside that’s fine — half of what we see in all medicine is placebo.”

In the Autumn 2021 issue of The Biologist, neuropsychopharmacologist Professor David Nutt reports on how use of psychedelic substances as treatments for conditions such as depression will revolutionise mental health care and represents the biggest innovation in psychiatry since the 1950s.

Read the article, p26–31, here.

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Access to the digital magazine issues included in this post will be active until the 10th December 2022.

For more information about World Mental Health Day please visit the Mental Health Foundation’s website here.

Fully-searchable digital subscriptions to New Internationalist, Positive News, BBC Science Focus, and The Biologist are all available in the Exact Editions individual and institutional shops.