BREAK YOUR STIGMA

Seeking professional help for mental health? Check out this website

Mental health is certainly a topic of concern these days, when fear and anxiety have begun to take their hold and isolation has started taking its toll.

While many have begun seeking professional help — kudos to you for taking the brave first step! — access to mental health professionals continues to be a problem.

Enter BYS (Be Yourself) Philippines. It recently launched an advocacy website for mental health support called Break Your Stigma. And advocate it does as it gives Filipino better access to mental health professionals.  

On the website is a directory of mental health professionals with whom people can connect.

It also has "other resources that can empower them to take control of their own healing" such as a tab on gatherings for those who may want or need that sense of community and a tab on stories, where "a collection of diverse perspectives of what it means to be human" can be found.  

According to a press statement, Break Your Stigma was born "to help break the barriers that deter people from acknowledging their mental health condition and seeking help."

"It is [BYS'] fervent hope that we all learn new ways to be kinder to ourselves and to one another," it added.

According to Angie Goyena, President of iFace, Inc., the parent company of BYS Philippines, talking about mental health should be normalized — as though it's skin care they're talking about. 

"It's as perfectly acceptable to have a psychiatrist as it is to have a dermatologist," she said. "If you don't feel guilty when your skin or makeup isn't flawless, you shouldn't feel guilty when your mental health isn't either."

However, BYS makes clear that Break Your Stigma is an advocacy platform. It is not accredited medical organization, it clarified. It does "not provide any interventions but seek to create a space where we can share information about medical practitioners, who can." 

If you're pondering professional help but don't know where to turn, check out Break Your Stigma. — LA, GMA News