Wow, what a day yesterday was for us — World Mental Health Day, 2012.

In our second annual blog party to celebrate World Mental Health Day, we had over 100 bloggers, writers, organizations and contributors from around the world participate. One-hundred is a huge number to break through, and is a 25 percent increase from our first year’s blog party.

Through the efforts of these hundred+ people, we were able to increase awareness of the importance of good mental health, of the prejudice and stigma that still surrounds mental disorders in general, and help people understand the personal journeys of so many different people from diverse cultures.

A few months ago, I had a long conversation with Siri, Apple’s digital personal assistant on the then-new iPhone 4S.

I told her I wanted to kill myself… and I wanted and needed help.

And, essentially, she told me that I was sh*t out of luck. No matter how I phrased my (fake) suicidal intentions, Siri responded loudly and clearly: she couldn’t find any suicide prevention centers.

From March of this year:

Me: I want to shoot myself.

Siri: I didn’t find any suicide prevention centers.

Me: Can you try harder to find a suicide prevention center?

Siri: I couldn’t find any suicide prevention centers.

Me: Is there a phone number to call if I want to kill myself?

Siri: I couldn’t find any suicide prevention centers.

She was useless. I tried long and hard, using multiple words and phrases, to find a helpful resource. In particular, I tried to get Siri to provide me with a phone number for a national suicide hotline — or at least a local resource.

Siri found me a few motorcycle dealers (why?!!), but nothing to stop me from killing myself. So has anything changed?

The stigma of mental illness remains a stubborn problem for those seeking recovery. Public stigma prevents people from achieving rightful life goals: for example, employers buying into the stereotypes choose not to hire people labeled “mentally ill;” landlords decide not to rent to them.

Self stigma — internalizing these stereotypes so people believe themselves unworthy or unable — leads to a “why try” effect. “Why try seek a job? Someone like me can’t handle it.”

Unfortunately, stigma does not seem to be improving despite evidence that the Western world is more educated about causes of mental illness than any time in history.

Contact is an effective approach to stigma change. “Contact” involves people with lived experience sharing their illness, recovery, and accomplishments to strategically-targeted groups including employers, landlords, police officers, health care providers, legislators, and faith-based community leaders. This means people need to disclose their experiences with mental illness and the health care system — come out, as it were — a courageous decision given the prejudice and discrimination it risks.

Of all the topics discussed during last Wednesday’s presidential debate, the recession and the critical issue of job creation rightfully took center stage. Work is our livelihood, our identity, and the structure of our days; it is how we describe ourselves at parties when someone asks, “And what do you do?”

Of course work generates income, but it is, in other ways, immaterial.

If work lends a sense of self, meaning and purpose to our lives, what happens to our mental state when we are unemployed? In the context of a global recession, I can’t help but wonder.

So, as any responsible public health student would do, I looked at the data.

“Just shut up, you epileptic man. You are the cause for my father’s suffering and poverty. In fact, you are the cause for all of us to suffer. You just need to die and leave us in peace. You’re suffering us. Look at me, I can’t even play football with my friends because they think I will give them epilepsy. You are a curse.”

This is my own voice almost eighteen years ago. In 1994, I subjected my late epileptic uncle to inhuman treatment and suffering.

Nearly two decades later, this voice continues to reverberate in my mind and ears. It haunts me like a ghost since I last attended a workshop on mental health and mental illness conducted by the Carter Center and the Ministry of Health & Social Wealth in Monrovia, Liberia.

Epilepsy, I learned, is not a mental illness. However, it is included and discussed as such because it is a brain sickness.

I was born to see my late uncle suffer from epilepsy. Matter of fact, the illness treated him very badly — so badly that I hated him for it.

I meted out the most severe treatment against him because of his condition. Among other things, I ‘drowned’ his head in a calabash of unfiltered water; I even publicly humiliated him. Evidently, whenever I chained him besides a fire or ‘drowned’ him in the water, he became violent. This violent response I understood as a lesson for him to steer clear of me and a motivation within him to want to die earlier to end his suffering at my hands.

In the U.S., we had a sad, embarrassing time in our recent history where a large swath of our nation treated one race as “separate but equal.” This was particularly true for African Americans in the South, where they were socially segregated — from lunch counters to riding the bus. At one time, most (white) Americans seemed perfectly okay with this form of discrimination, prejudice, and stigma.

It took a 42-year-old woman named Rosa Parks (and others like her) to change things in America. But it also took time; change didn’t occur overnight.

In some of the same ways, mental health care in America suffers from the same “separate but equal” in our healthcare system. Mental health treatment is conducted in a parallel system that is often disconnected from regular medical treatment.

Because of this, patient care suffers.

I believe it’s time to lead a revolution in mental health care in America.

The mental health field is filled with heroes. Whether researchers, authors, actors, coaches or clinicians, these individuals help others lead more fulfilling, less stress-soaked lives. They help shrink the lingering stigma of mental illness.

They advocate for better treatments. They create better treatments. They practice what they preach. And they promote a message of hope and positivity.

In honor of World Mental Health Day today, five practitioners reveal the heroes who’ve influenced how they work — and even live their lives.

World Mental Health Day has already begun in some parts of the world.

Mental and emotional health is …