Mental health is a topic close to my heart, something which I’ve been working on developing my knowledge on throughout the past years and learning to embrace it as part of my daily life. It is though a topic which, unfortunately, in many situations in our culture is still considered taboo. And that’s such a pity, because our mental health should be as important as our physical health.

When something hurts physically what do we do? Probably first try to fix it ourselves (where’s my “there’s nothing a painkiller and goodnight’s sleep won’t fix” people at?) or, when it becomes clear we’re not able to fix it ourselves, we turn to a specialist.

To me it’s the same thing with mental health. It’s something I try to consciously keep an eye on, check in with myself often and, when I feel like I’m not able to cope with a certain situation or phase in my life, I turn to a specialist.

I was lucky enough to have close friends and acquaintances in the psychology field, which definitely helped me remove much of my stigma around mental health, broaden my horizons and get a better understanding of what it means for each of us and how it actually affects pretty much our entire life.

I’ve undergone therapy a couple of times until now, I’m not ashamed to say that and I will never be, because it’s completely normal and natural to ask for help when we need it. Therapy is not for “crazy people”, it’s actually a very sane way of coping with the ups and downs life throws at us.

When should we resort to therapy?

To be honest, I would suggest everyone to give it a try at some point in their lives. You'd be surprised of how many things you can learn about yourself and how much it can help you cope with day to day struggles.

A therapist will never tell you what to do, but they have the knowledge to guide you through it and help you understand where certain issues come from and how to best deal with them, or even how to help yourself heal certain wounds (tip: most of them come from our childhood, sorry mom and dad).

In honor of Mental Health Awareness month, I wanted to share a bit of what we do here at mindit.io to promote mental health and encourage people to take care of themselves.

Apart from enabling people to be the best version of themselves they can be (which, to me, is already an amazing thing and it’s been such a great journey), we also provide a few targeted benefits for our lovely people.

mindit.io Mental Health Benefits and activities

• ‍2 mental health days/year: Each of our mindit.io employees receive 2 extra vacation days per year that they can use at any time, with as little notice as the day of the request. That’s because we know that there are certain moments when, regardless of the reason, we need the time and space to focus on ourselves rather than work, and that’s completely normal and understandable.‍
• 2 free therapy sessions/month: Therapy is great, but it can get pretty expensive, so this benefit definitely comes in handy. I know I’ve taken advantage of it to the fullest 😊‍
• Workshops/events:  From time to time, we also partner up with different organizations for workshops meant to bring awareness around topics which play an important part in our general wellbeing (nutrition, therapy, etc).

For example, this month we’ve organized an entire week of Mental Health Days, with workshops, open discussions between our people and, most important, smoothies at the office!