By: Yalonda McCutcheon

A need to be proactive in speaking and working on the behalf of persons suffering with Mental Health issues and take responsibility for ones own Mental Health Needs.

3rd · Adult Writing (2021)

In the echoes, I hear voices speak, Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter.

In those echoes, I strain to hear, Mental Health Matters.

Social issues are visible to the world, to the people, to the victim.
In every expression, every motion, movement mounted with
momentum.

Social unrest flaunts itself, family violence flashes its ugliness, homicide,
suicide but the villain behind it all are the thoughts inside the mind.

Mental health matters to the Innocent ones in schools, when trying to
understand why shooters do what they do.

To the couple in a restaurant, oblivious of the threat of the person who
will take one of their lives, a person struggling with mental
disturbances.

To the worker on a job just trying to make it through the day when a
co-worker comes and takes their life away.

Mental Health is not only for the extreme. It’s for you. It’s for me. We
all could be one crisis away from losing our sanity. We think we could
never, until we find ourselves under those pressures, challenging our
fortitude, taking us to places we never knew.

When Mental Health matters perhaps some preventable losses will
cease, and in their place will stand counseling, treatment and a society
that believes…. Mental Health Matters.