World Mental Health Day; National Coming Out Day
October 10 is World Mental Health Day (WMHD) (see U.N., wiki.)
We really don't have a mental health program in the United States. Like some other conditions, people with mental health problems are stigmatized and ostracized. Most people don't know what to do with a mentally ill person; we don't have common gradations between mildly affected and dangerous, violent sociopaths. The police definitely don't know what to do with a person who's mentally ill; they often shoot them.
I have mental health issues, which is a rather indirect phrase; I am mentally ill. I have a lot of things wrong with me. Unlike some, I'm able to pass as mentally typical. In other words, I seem about as normal as your average Joe flying a Confederate flag. But I am not mentally normal.
In my life, people who know my situation have been good to me. An untrained person probably can't tell by looking at me.
In an America filled with exceptionalism, fetishized boot-strapping, and a focus on heroic individual success, the political world, the economic world, the social world - nobody really wants to embrace mental health. There's so much work to be done.
I don't like World Mental Health Day, because it reminds me of the yawning gaps of understanding and care. That's probably why I need it.
October 11 is National Coming Out Day (NCOD) (see wiki, HRC.)
There are so many people in so many different closets. Imagine how much easier it would be if they could just be themselves. I live in a place where people can get fired from their jobs if they're different. Where I live, people can be thrown out of apartments for being different.
Families aren't forgiving. Families want you to be consistent with who they think you are. Families don't want to hear challenges to the status quo.
People have a lot of good reasons for staying in the closet, for hiding a part of themselves, for wearing a mask. Sometimes it's a simple matter of safety.
Research indicates that for an oppressed or stigmatized group, conditions will improve when more of the majority realizes that they know somebody in the group. So the more people who come out, often at significant personal cost, the better it is for the larger LGBTQA group. But it's very courageous for those early scouts.
I put the B in LGBTQA.