Sound Mind Africa World Mental Health Day Campaign 2014

World Mental Health Day is the annual global celebration of mental health education, awareness and advocacy, taking place on the 10^th October 2014.

In order to help spread the mental health message, Sound Mind Africa are staging an interdisciplinary campaign to engage the general public through a variety of interventions taking place online and within Lagos.  Founder Oyindamola Fakeye describes the basis of this initiative as “An opportunity to provide a synergistic delivery of this important issue.”

1. #uberlagosMHD
2. #BrainFoodMHD
3. #MotivatedMHD
4. #RetailtherapyMHD
5. #Eden MHD
6. #HealthyspacesMHD

7. #YogaPicnicMHD

#luvmeandmyMHD

#ifactoryngMHD
8. #DanceMHD

Being stressed can make you fat. FACT!

Majiri Otobo from LuvMeandMy

In our day-to-day hustle and bustle, we sometimes do not realise how dealing with, let’s call them life’s challenges, affects both our mind and body. Being calm not only gives you peace, but also triggers certain signals to your body allowing it to focus its energy on key body functions.

Evidently our body is an amazing machine designed by nature. Our buildings, jobs, cars, roads are all human construct that have effected the way we interact with our environment. Our bodies were designed for a world where there were potentially fewer things to be stressed over with more disastrous consequences.

So a bit of traffic or your boss being a bit of an @&£ would be significantly low on the stressor list in comparison to becoming Mufasa’s lunch (Mufasa, THE Lion King ….for adults who no longer use Disney references).

Survival would be the ultimate reason for stress if we lived like the cavemen did.  Our bodies, would therefore use the bio-chemical signals of stress to make sure it stores as much energy in our body as fat in order to prepare for the perceived threat of a “famine”. Therefore when we are stressed our bodies make us fatter to protect us.