11/10/2025
| World Mental Health Month: Access to care is not a privilege, it is a human right.
Mental health is like the weather inside us. Sometimes it is calm, sometimes cloudy, and sometimes it is the storm no one else sees until the roof gives in.
For many, the fiercest battles are hidden in silence, carried behind smiles, grades, deadlines, and the automatic reply of “I’m fine.”
Each year, World Mental Health Month is guided by a theme that calls attention to a critical issue. For 2025, the focus is Access to Services – Mental Health in Catastrophes and Emergencies.
This reminds us that in times of disaster, conflict, pandemic, or other crises, people carry invisible aftershocks. Trauma, grief, and stress linger long after the first waves of chaos, yet counselling, therapy, and community support often remain out of reach.
The truth is heavy. Around 970 million people live with a mental disorder worldwide. More than 720,000 lives are lost to su***de every year, with twenty more attempts for every death.
In the Philippines, resilience during calamities is often praised as if it were the ultimate solution, but this narrative can be dangerous. Accordingly, 3.2 people per 100,000 die by su***de in the country, with the youth among the most vulnerable. After emergencies, cases of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress rise sharply, yet mental health care is still the most neglected need.
Romanticizing resilience places the burden of survival on individuals while excusing the lack of proper support systems. People should not have to suffer in silence and simply be applauded for enduring. True resilience is not about glorifying endurance but about building communities where care, resources, and mental health support are accessible, especially in times of disaster.
Access to care is not a privilege, it is a human right.
If calamities test the strength of our structures, they also test the strength of our compassion. A society is truly resilient not only when it rebuilds its walls, but when it heals its people.
This World Mental Health Month, let us remember that care, dignity, and compassion must not be optional. They must be available to all.
This month is not just about awareness but about action. Affordable, community-based mental health care exists and works. It can reach people through schools, health centers, and even digital spaces.
We need leaders and institutions to invest in it, but we also need one another as friends, peers, and family to create spaces of empathy.
Today, let’s pause and genuinely ask those around us how they are. Let’s remind them that rest is not laziness and that saying “I need help” is not defeat but one of the bravest things a person can do.
If you are struggling, you are not alone. If you are healing, every step matters. If you are surviving, your story is worth telling.
In iWrite, we care. We echo this call. We choose empathy over silence, care over dismissal, and community over isolation.
Because every story matters.
Because every person matters. 💚
Words by Angela Caidic
Layout by Lovely Hope Lorca
