#BellLetsTalk – What if the elephant in the room could speak?

Photo by James Hammond on Unsplash

Today is Bell Let’s Talk Day, an anti-stigma mental health awareness campaign sponsored by the Canadian telecom company Bell.  Similar to the UK organization Time to Change’s Time To Talk Day coming up on February 7, the goal is to get people talking about mental health and mental illness.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the book The Stigma Effect and what it had to say about the types of anti-stigma effects that are effective as well as those that are ineffective.  It’s main point was that actual contact with people who have mental illness is by far the most effective strategy, and education/awareness campaigns don’t accomplish a lot, and in some cases they may even be counterproductive.

There are a lot of great organizations out there that are committed to fighting stigma: Time To Change, Sick Not Weak,