Good-Bye HAWMC - Hello Mental Health Awareness Month

May 1, 2012

April is over and so is the Wego Health Activist Writer's Month Challenge. For the most part, I enjoyed it. I didn't post thirty times, but I did post eighteen times and that's a lot for me. I liked having the creative prompts and I think posting more times increased my traffic. I'm going to really try to keep on posting more often, even if that means that sometimes the post is really short.  I probably had the most fun with writing the six sentence story. It forced me to concentrate on my editing, which is always a good skill to practice. What was your favorite post?

 May is mental health awareness month. Since this is a mental health focused blog, not much will change, but it is worth noting. Of course, I will continue to write about mental health as it pertains to myself and to the community at large. May 16 is a mental health blogging party, sponsored by the American Psychological Association and I'll be participating, which just means that I will post an article about mental health on that day as usual...  May 9 is my birthday and I will be 31.  I am looking forward to it-I really think that 31 is going to be a good year.

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Recommended Links:

 Racialicious - Racist Things Steampunks Are Not Immune To: Dysconscious Racism

Anti-racism is a conscious thing. It has to be cultivated as conscious habit. We grow up with so many unexamined assumptions and with poor education systems that cannot possibly cover the length and breadth of the world. Sometimes, our own education systems don’t even cover the ins and outs of our own countries’ histories (and seeing as how schools are as form of state apparatus to mold citizens that comply with state expectations, it’s no wonder!), so it’s easy to grow up not realizing all these histories. 

Dysconscious racism, then, is sort of a default state of mind for a lot of people who refuse to develop the critical thinking skills needed to actively combat racism. There’re only so many ways to combat dysconscious racism, and unless the person exhibiting it is willing to give thinking a try, there’s really not much you can do, except reiterate, over and over, “racism can be fixed. Racism is not a natural state of being. Racism is not here to stay. Racism is taught, not intrinsic to humanity,” and hope they gradually internalize that.

Womanist Musings - Worried That You’re Transphobic? You Might Be.

If we are unaware of our own internalized biases, then there is nothing to prevent us from acting on them. There is no inner control mechanism that stops us before we say or do something offensive, damaging, or dangerous, because we are not aware that we might. There is nothing that prevents us from allowing these biases to continue, within ourselves and within our society. […] Denial of our biases is actually far more destructive than acknowledging them, because if we deny them, we never do the work to eliminate them. It’s better to face even minor biases head on and say, “I have this, but I don’t want it. Where did it originate, what can I do to change it, and how can I make sure that it doesn’t negatively influence my behaviors or harm others?”

One comment on “Good-Bye HAWMC - Hello Mental Health Awareness Month”

  1. I'm so excited about Mental Health Awareness month. I plan on giving NAMI a big, fat check! And possibly giving my son's doc a nice box of chocolates...

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