#TBCSmiles... 62 Months

This month saw World Mental Health Day, and this year the theme was Suicide Prevention. Obviously this is something I feel very strongly about, and support, but it made it quite a heavy day to get through.

I wrote a post called Life Goes On for World Suicide Prevention Day in September and I wasn't up for writing another so soon. If you've ever written from the depths of your soul, you'll find it's cathartic, but utterly exhausting. It makes everything clearer when you get all the words out of your head. It puts everything into the right order and stops it swirling so much, but you need a break afterwards to recover. Just like counselling really.

One of the points I saw repeatedly on World Mental Health Day (and know from experience) is that people in the UK simply don't have the early access to care that can make all the difference. If you have a mental health problem, even with a referral to your doctor, you can wait many months to be seen by a professional. Even in crisis you can expect to wait weeks. Individuals carry on suffering or deteriorating until their appointment, and their recovery time will become longer with every week they wait to start treatment. It is inevitably too late for some.

NHS spending on mental health is approximately 1/10th of it's entire £129b budget. Your mental health affects everything else, including how physically well you are, how quickly you recover from illness and how often you are off work or school. It would be good to see this percentage rise, although the NHS as it stands isn't in a position to lose any money anywhere else...

Young Minds have a petition to ask the Government to act more quickly on young people's mental health - please sign it. More children are needing the services and waiting times are going up. For children the wait is even worse because it represents a much larger period of their life. To realise you might have to wait 1/10th of your entire life for help is unfathomable, and clearly dangerous.

Suicide is the biggest killer of our children, it takes more victims than Cancer. We need to make huge changes to society for a permanent improvement, but right now we need to get people the help as soon as they need it.

We can still smile, and we can all pass on our smiles and brighten someone's day. I defy you not to grin when you look at this month's selection of #TBCSmiles. We've had lots of big, bold beams this month - every single one gorgeous. Thank you to everyone who shares their smiles over on Instagram - they make my month and I know they bring joy to others.

Anyone is welcome to join in, you don't need a fancy camera or a million followers, just tag any photo with a smile! We pick out 9 of the biggest for the collage. This month's selection were shared by the following Instagrammers:

Jessa67 / TheMumDiaries / NotMyYearOff

SusanAdair / MemeAndHarri / SusanKMann

HappyMummyBlogs / SuperBusyMum / Over40AndAMumToOne

We had our own smiles too here, mainly courtesy of reviews for Hatching Dragons, Bunch O Balloons and Chill Factore Snowboard Taster Sessions - and an 11th birthday!