For the second year, the Canadian Mental Health Association's Mental Health Week is coming during a global pandemic.

Last year, COVID-19 very abruptly changed the narrative, so to speak; introducing new challenges to people's psychological well being as seemingly on a dime, an entirely new vocabulary was introduced with terms like "social distancing" and "flattening the curve"

Swift Current Online spoke with CMHA Swift Current Executive Director Jacqui Williams to talk about what has changed in people's perception of the pandemic and why they chose the slogan "#GetLoud" for this year's Mental Health Week.

For her, #GetLoud is about speaking up about how one is really feeling and calling it what it is. Similar to last year's #GetReal campaign, but with a noticeable new twist.

On the surface it may seem as though not much has changed in the world since last year's campaign. Still gripped in a pandemic.  Cases still continuing to climb.  Most lockdowns remain in effect to some degree.  And the spectre of social distancing still haunts workplaces and shopping malls and schools.

But Williams sees things far more optimistically.

At the risk of calling anything to do with COVID-19 an "upside", the past year has nevertheless seen a new level of honesty regarding mental health that perhaps had been missing.

"I definitely notice that the acceptance and the acknowledgement of struggling with our mental health have been one of the upsides of the pandemic. Not that people are struggling, of course. But that people are able to identify it and see how important it is; that the struggle is actually real."

Originally from Newfoundland, Williams says her home province and Saskatchewan share a similar mindset; a kind of bootstrap stoicism that encourages people who are struggling to "suck it up and move on".

Williams has seen during the last year people acknowledging the fact that sometimes that's just not possible.

Hence the key difference between #GetReal and this year's #GetLoud.

A year into the pandemic, mental health challenges are suddenly very real for a lot of people who prior to COVID would have been of the mindset to suffer silently.

Reality has set in. Now it's about feeling secure enough to reach out for help.

"We're all struggling through the pandemic together...apart. It's becoming more accepted because people are more likely to verbalize if they're feeling sad. They might call it for what it feels like."

It's the difference between saying "I'm feeling anxious" and "I'm struggling with anxiety".

For Williams, COVID-19 has started to normalize the usage of the medical terms for mental health challenges. And changing the language, in turn, changes the perception.

For more on Mental Health Week, including planned online events and a number of resources to help with those facing challenges, look to the CMHA's website here.

Mental Health Week 2021 runs from May 3 - 9