Hugging someone you love, having a conversation with a loved one, reminiscing about the good achievements you have had in the year are some of the activities you’re recommended to do today. Just for the sake of your mental health.

The world observes World Mental Health Day every 10th October with an aim of raising awareness for issues to do with mental health and tailoring conversation around the subject to ensure that it doesn’t continue claiming people’s lives.

This year’s focus has been on “preventing suicides” and I can only applaud whoever thought about it because they really looked into one of the extreme outcomes of poor mental health among young people in this modern era.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO) statistics, someone loses their life to suicide every 40 seconds in the world. That’s how complex and deadly mental health can get.

Life is not as straight as we anticipated it, it has ups and downs. Mostly downs, but should that be the reason you go? Under normal circumstances no and we should work to ensure that neither us nor our friends reach extremes of taking life to feel better.

Do you check on your friends? Do you genuinely get interested in their lives or you only check on them when you want favours? That is the least we can all do in commemoration of this day. It is sad and really traumatizing if you found out that your friend committed suicide because you were not there for them. The guilt and self blame could consume you up too.

Let us therefore, extend a hand to our friends. Find out how they’re fairing, encourage them that everything will be alright and be the reason they smile today.