Halloween Awareness

It’s almost that time of year again…Halloween!  A fun time for children and adults to dress up as their favorite characters, have Halloween parties, and, most importantly, to indulge in sweets. While Halloween has evolved to be a fun time of year, many of us celebrate the day without knowing the cultural, religious, or spiritual, and psychological meanings behind the holiday. In this post we quickly go over a few of these meanings and urge everyone to do more of their own research in order to learn more about and respect these meanings different to what you may know.

 

Cultural, Religious, or Spiritual Awareness

While in the United States we call it Halloween, the holiday is known as “Day of the Dead” and “All Saints Day”, “All Souls Day” or “All Hallows Eve” by European or Latin cultures. These days of observance were originally religious or spiritual events intended to be a joyful occasion to celebrate the souls of the deceased while feasting and praying. The United States’ Halloween is rarely portrayed as being a day of celebration to honor souls. Instead, it has become a day of entertainment.

Psychological Awareness

Many parents may find themselves trying to monitor or avoid buying their kids' scary costumes or watching scary movies because of concerns or observations about increased fear, anxiety, and/or panic. However, this does not just hold true for children. Scary movies, storylines, and costumes often represent increased stigma for mental health, including the use of strait jackets or restraints, haunted houses being staged in hospitals and prisons, and individuals being portrayed as dangerous or “insane”. In addition to furthering the misconceptions that mental health and people with mental health are scary/bad, these images can be traumatic for people with or without mental illness because of these misconceptions. Many symptoms of mental illness can become exacerbated for individuals to be hospitalized or restrained or be placed in psychiatric facilities for stabilization. These possibilities alone can be terrifying for people with (or without) mental illness to think about, witness, and experience themselves, and therefore they may not be able to enjoy Halloween the same way as others do. Misconceptions of mental health symptoms and illnesses are very real for people and the loved ones that care for them and may be difficult to witness as a source of entertainment during the Halloween season.

 

Halloween is a fun time of year! We hope everyone safely enjoys all is has to offer (especially lots of candy!). In addition, we hope you challenge yourself to raise awareness to others and provide education to reduce the painful stigma associated with mental illness, as well as learn about and respect the other cultural, religious, and spiritual practices of this day.