Why Mental Health and Neurodivergence Awareness Matters (And No, I Don't Mean a Green Ribbon)

Awareness isn't about hashtags. It's about being believed. It's about not having to wait until you're 52 to understand your own brain. It's about saving lives.

I've been "aware" of mental health for as long as I can remember. Not because I read a leaflet or watched a documentary or wore a ribbon. Because I lived it. Because I was the child who cried too easily, the teenager who was "highly strung," the adult who burned out of every job she ever had and thought it was a personal failing. I didn't need a campaign to tell me mental health existed. I needed someone—anyone—to tell me that what I was experiencing had a name. And that it wasn't my fault.

That's what awareness actually means. Not green ribbons. Not "it's okay to not be okay" on a billboard. Not a week in May when everyone posts helpline numbers and then forgets about it for the other 51 weeks of the year. Real awareness is the difference between spending 52 years thinking you're broken and spending those same 52 years understanding your own brain. It's the difference between being dismissed and being believed. Between struggling in silence and being seen.

And for too many of us, that awareness comes far too late. If it comes at all.

The Awareness I Needed (And Didn't Get)

Let me tell you about the awareness I needed as a child. I needed someone—a teacher, a parent, a GP—to notice that I wasn't just "sensitive." I was anxious. Clinically, persistently, life-alteringly anxious. I lay awake at night at seven years old, terrified of dying. I replayed conversations for hours, checking for mistakes. I felt things so deeply that the world often felt like it was sandpaper against my nerves. That wasn't a "personality quirk." That was a nervous system in overdrive. But nobody called it that. Nobody called it anything. They just called me "a bit much."

I needed someone to notice that my inability to start tasks, my constant overwhelm, my tendency to burn out of every structured environment I entered—that wasn't laziness. That was executive dysfunction. That was a brain running a completely different operating system with no manual and no support. But nobody noticed. They just called me "not applying myself."

I needed someone to notice that my mothering, my grandparenting, my whole way of moving through the world was shaped by a neurotype that nobody had ever named. I needed someone to tell me, when my grandson Archie was diagnosed autistic and I started reading to understand him, that I might find myself in those pages too. I did find myself. At 52. By accident. Through love. That's too late. That's decades too late.

What Happens When Awareness Is Absent

When awareness is absent—when mental health and neurodivergence are not talked about, not taught, not understood—here's what happens.

People suffer in silence. They think they're the only ones. They think they're broken. They develop elaborate masks to hide their struggles, and those masks cost them everything. Energy. Relationships. Careers. Their sense of self. I spent forty years thinking I was bad at being a person. That's not dramatic. That's just what happens when you have no framework for understanding your own brain.

People are misdiagnosed or dismissed. My daughter Leah was diagnosed with EUPD. We both believe it's a misdiagnosis—that what she's actually dealing with is undiagnosed ADHD and autism, presenting the way they so often do in women: as emotional intensity, as overwhelm, as "personality disorder" when the real disorder is a world not built for her brain. This happens all the time. Women spend years, decades, being treated for the wrong thing. Being told they're "too complex." Being passed from service to service. Because the people assessing them don't have enough awareness to see what's actually there.

People reach crisis point. I ended up in A&E, convinced I was having a heart attack. It was a panic attack. A spectacular one. I was sent home with a leaflet and a suggestion to "try breathing exercises." That leaflet was not awareness. That leaflet was a plaster on a haemorrhage. If I'd understood my nervous system earlier—if someone had explained what a panic attack actually is, why it happens, that it's not dangerous—I might not have ended up in that ambulance at all. Or I might at least have understood what was happening to me.

People die. In the UK, suicide is the single biggest killer of men under 50. Three out of four suicides are men. And while awareness campaigns have made some progress, we're still losing thousands of people every year because they couldn't talk, couldn't reach out, couldn't see a way through. Awareness isn't just about feeling seen. It's about saving lives. It's about making sure people know there are options, treatments, communities, hope.

What Real Awareness Looks Like (And What It Doesn't)

Real awareness is not a hashtag. It's not a TikTok trend. It's not wearing a green ribbon for a day and then going back to your life unchanged.

Real awareness is structural. It means training GPs properly in menopause, in neurodivergence, in the way anxiety presents in different bodies. It means mental health parity in the NHS—so that waiting lists for ADHD assessments aren't measured in years. It means workplaces that actually accommodate different brains, not just put up a "Mental Health First Aider" poster and call it done.

Real awareness is cultural. It means teaching children about emotions, about neurodiversity, about how brains differ, from primary school onwards. It means normalising therapy, medication, asking for help—so that by the time they're adults, they don't have to unlearn decades of shame. It means representation in media that isn't stereotyped, isn't sensationalised, isn't reduced to "the scary schizophrenic" or "the quirky ADHD sidekick."

Real awareness is personal. It's the friend who says, "I've noticed you seem off. I'm here if you want to talk, no pressure." It's the partner who learns about your condition without making you educate them. It's the parent who advocates for their child instead of telling them to "just fit in." It's you, reading this, deciding to believe people when they tell you about their own experiences.

Real awareness is not performative. It's not a company posting "It's okay to not be okay" during Mental Health Awareness Week while simultaneously overworking their staff into burnout. It's not an influencer filming themselves crying and then cutting to an ad for a journal. It's not "raising awareness" by sharing a helpline number and then scrolling past. Performative awareness is worse than no awareness, because it lets people feel like they've done something when they've done nothing at all.

Why It Matters Now, For Me, For You

I'm 52. I'm on a waiting list for ADHD and autism assessments. I've lived with anxiety my entire life. I've been dismissed, misjudged, and misunderstood more times than I can count. I've also, finally, started to understand my own brain. And that understanding—that awareness—has changed everything.

It hasn't cured me. I still wake up at 4am with my heart pounding for no reason. I still have days when everything feels like too much. I still avoid the kitchen at night because Mr. A is in there with his whiskey and his aggressive dishwashing. But I no longer think any of that means I'm broken. I know now that my brain is wired differently. That my nervous system is sensitive. That I'm not lazy or difficult or "too much." I'm just me. And I'm finally, slowly, learning to like the architecture.

Awareness gave me that. Not a campaign. Not a ribbon. Not a hashtag. The slow, patient work of reading, listening, learning, and being believed.

If you're early in your journey—if you're just starting to wonder whether your brain might work differently—I want you to have that awareness sooner than I did. I want you to have it at 22, or 32, or 42, not 52. I want you to know that you're not broken. That there's a reason for the way you feel. That you're not alone.

And if you're not on a personal journey—if you're someone who loves someone with a mental health condition or a neurodivergent brain—I want you to have the kind of awareness that actually helps. The kind that listens without fixing. That believes without interrogating. That shows up without making it about you. That's the awareness that saves lives. That's the awareness that matters.

One Small Thing

Awareness isn't all or nothing. You don't have to become an expert. You don't have to march or campaign or post. You just have to do one small thing.

Believe someone when they tell you about their experience. Read a book by an autistic author. Follow a neurodivergent creator. Ask your friend, "What helps when you're struggling?" and then actually do that thing. Learn the difference between "I'm a bit anxious too" and an anxiety disorder. Notice when you're dismissing someone's reality because it doesn't match your assumptions.

One small thing, multiplied by millions of people, is how culture changes. Is how waiting lists get shorter. Is how suicide rates come down. Is how 52-year-old women like me don't have to wait until they're grandparents to understand their own brains.

Awareness matters. Real awareness. Not the performative kind. The kind that changes things. For you. For me. For the next generation. For Archie, who's nearly five and autistic and deserves a world that understands him from the start. For Leah, who deserves a correct diagnosis. For Euan, who deserves to navigate his ADHD traits without shame. For all of us, who deserve to be believed.

Anxiously Ever After is written by me, Jennie, a 50-something-year-old woman with lifelong anxiety, diagnosed GAD, and currently on the waiting list for ADHD and autism assessments. I write from a rented room in a shared house, door locked, figuring it out in real time.