Today we celebrate World Mental Health Day with a focus on mental health in the workplace.

About 10% of the employed population have taken time off for depression, and 36 workdays on average are lost per depressive episode. Around half of people with depression remain untreated, and their lifetime risk for suicide is 20%.

Despite a significant proportion of the workforce suffering from mental health conditions, a huge stigma around it still persists and prevents it from being talked about with more than 70% of people concealing their condition from others We need to end the taboo of mental health conditions in the workplace. With this, all the more do we call on our fellow pharmacists and pharmacy students nationwide to support the mental health bill as it passes through the final hurdles of the ongoing 2nd reading at the House of Representatives, passage on the 3rd reading, a bicameral conference to merge the Senate and House versions of the bill, and finally signing by the President. This Act will ensure that mental health service users and any person with problems regarding their mental health will have the right to "freedom from social, economic, and political discrimination and stigmatization" and the right to accessible quality treatment options. Because there is no health without mental health!

#StompTheStigma #MentalHealthMatters #MHActNow #RPh4MH