Last week, a petition popped up on my social media feed. You can read about it here, and it is a campaign to get mental health on the curriculum for agriculture courses at colleges and universities. Agriculture (and associated industries) has an incredible high suicide rate, and the person who set up the campaign has pointed out that they were taught about health and safety when using machinery, but no one ever taught them anything about keeping their mental well-being healthy.

Surely this should be on every course, not just agriculture courses. I teach teens, and listen to the problems that they face every day. It can be a very different world to the one I grew up in, and we need to put mental health firmly on the agenda, we need to remove stigma, and the language we use every day to make sure we help our teens grow up healthy in every way.

But let’s not forget adults – men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women, it’s the most common cause of death in men, and it’s still a taboo subject. There is an interesting article from Esquire Magazine here, and, as it points out, we are cutting deaths from cancer and other physical diseases, but mental health numbers, and suicides, are rising.

Women aren’t immune either, and there must be hundreds of woman suffering in silence from the effects of mental health issues.

However, controversial bit coming up, we also need to be honest, and change our language. If I have a bad day and am feeling a little low, I am not depressed, I am just feeling a little low. If I have an exam coming up and am worried, this doesn’t mean I am plagued with anxiety (if I have anxiety, I might be, but being worried about an exam is not the same as being overwhelmed by anxiety on a day to day basis).  Just as a cold is not the same as ‘flu, feeling sad after you go back to work after an amazing holiday is not the same as depression.

Nevertheless, if it is us who is struggling and suffering, we need to be brave enough to speak out. If we run a company, we need to support our workers and recognise that there are times when a sick day may be needed to alleviate a mental health issue, and not just physical health issues (like this company have, and it’s gone viral).

We need to put mental health and mental well-being firmly on the agenda. We need to be there for each other, to understand that what may be routine for us is a battle for someone else. We need to be supportive of our friends, colleagues and neighbours. We need to listen, and if it isn’t time to talk, we need to sit with them in the silence and let them know we are there.