World Mental Health Day 2017 Kintsugi facepaint

1 in 4 adults and 1 in 10 children will experience a mental health problem in a given year. In any given week 1 in 10 adults are suffering with depression. With such statistics it's hard to believe that we all talk so little about mental health and that there is still such stigma surrounding it.

This year, on World Mental Health Day, I am celebrating my history of mental illness and showing that it is nothing to be ashamed of by painting golden cracks on my face to imitate the Japanse art of Kintsugi.

Kintsugi, roughly translated as 'golden joinery', is a Zen tradition of repairing broken ceramics with a gold infused lacquer. It is a practice filled with respect for the item, rather than trying to hide the cracks, the gold lacquer makes a strong join while celebrating the damage endured along the way. In this way I want to show that despite the many times my mental health difficulties have broken me, I have taken great care to put myself back together again but I also carry the history of those experiences with me and they are a part of who I am and make me, as a person, stronger and more beautiful than before.

For me, ACT is my gold infused lacquer, helping me join the pieces back together, stronger and more resilient than before and this blog is my way of showing off the beauty of those gold cracks to the world. Whatever tools you use to help you manage your illness I hope you will want to join in with me today and on future World Mental Health days.

Please post your photos on the Keeping Up The ACT Facebook page and pass the idea on to your friends. If you have joined me today or in the future, then my heartfelt thanks to you.

Kintsugi for mental health awareness

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of joining broken ceramics together with gold infused lacquer. Instead of hiding the joins between the pieces, the golden lacquer celebrates and honours the item's history by highlighting every crack.

When we suffer with mental health problems it can often feel like we have been broken and we spend huge amounts of effort putting ourselves back together again. But sadly we have a tendency to hide our struggles and not let anyone else know what we've been through - trying to put the pieces together while hiding the cracks. Maybe we could take a lesson from Kintsugi and celebrate our own history, the struggles we've been through and the achievement of working through them.

This World Mental Health Day on Tuesday 10th October, join me as I paint golden cracks on my face to celebrate the beauty of the mental health issues I've endured and show others that they are not alone in their struggles.

I will be using facepaint to create the golden cracks on my face but feel free to use photo editing software to make your own image. Perhaps you would like to use your image as your Facebook profile photo on World Mental Health Day or just post it on our Facebook page to show your support. Thank you so much for helping raise awareness of mental health.