It’s March, and I’m thinking about the Mental Hygiene Challenge my former workplace used to host every year at this time.
What started as a simple community-wide challenge blossomed into a movement that extended beyond Ottawa. It still kind of thrills me. It was the first time the organization had done this type of community outreach. I learned so much, and gained a lot by it too.
In 2021 I was assigned to write a story about mental hygiene for the organization’s website, after some of our staff had published a research paper about it. I remember how I felt during that first interview. Like my heart grew bigger – or maybe a better metaphor is that the butterflies in my stomach flapped a little harder that day. I knew it was a great idea, and that sharing it with a wide audience could genuinely benefit anyone who read about it (and put it into practice, obviously.) I was uplifted by the concept, and by the people behind it. They were eager to promote it, and hoped the communications department would be open to collaborating on supporting materials, perhaps with infographics, that sort of thing.
I had the perfect idea.
Longtime readers here will know that I’ve hosted public challenges on the blog. I’ve always been keen to try something new, and having others join me always made it more fun and kept me accountable.
Skimming through my archives (I have a whole category just for challenges) I’m struck by how many there have been. The Shopping Embargo, Sugar-Free Challenge (that one was written up in the Ottawa Citizen), One Dress for Thirty Days, the Hourly Photo Challenge (which had many editions!), the 21-day Vegetarian Challenge, 25 Days of Christmas (remember that one? I did that for YEARS and I know many readers did too). Those are just the ones I remember.
So why not make a challenge out of mental hygiene?
I brought the idea to my small but mighty team. They were as excited as I was and immediately saw the potential. The first edition of the challenge launched in 2022.
Mental hygiene is a pretty simple concept. It refers to small everyday practices that support our mental health. It’s a kind of preventative maintenance, not unlike the hygienic routines we already do on autopilot, like brushing our teeth or showering.
For the challenge, we asked participants to spend at least 10 minutes each day on research-approved practices from our list: meditation and mindfulness exercises, time in nature, gratitude practice and journaling.
There were a lot of moving parts to all of this, including sign-up forms, a microsite, and a long list of how-to videos. As the resident writer, I provided content when it was needed, whether it was for the website, video scripts, internal posters, or e-newsletter text. In the final year of the challenge I had the idea of writing 31 emails, one for each day of the month. They were designed to keep participants inspired and engaged, and to prevent what we called “failure to launch,” that all-too-common gap between signing up with good intentions and actually following through.
Participants also had access to a range of printable materials including: colouring sheets, journaling prompts, and progress tracking calendars. Our graphic designer created several designs so people could choose and print whichever one they liked. It was in the second year that I suggested a unicorn rainbow theme. Some eyebrows went up. Rainbows and unicorns were not exactly “on brand” for this organization, but my goal was to get people interested and keep them interested. If a rainbow unicorn calendar on the fridge was the missing link, we had to make it happen. It turned out to be the most downloaded design. (You can see it here.)
The challenge grew in ways that we didn’t anticipate:
– A research component was added and we were able to show that daily mental hygiene has a positive impact on mental wellness. (Guillaume Tremblay and his co-author Nicole C. Rodrigues gave our team a nice shout-out in their most recently published paper, The Mental Hygiene Challenge – A Novel Public Mental Health Intervention.)
– We hosted a free in-person event where folks could learn from our experts, take part in demonstrations, pick up printed resources, ask questions, and connect with fellow participants.
– We maintained a private Facebook group for challenge participants, which quickly became an unexpected highlight for everyone involved. Members shared their highs and lows, and cheered each other on. We also hosted live discussions on Facebook to inform and encourage participants and answer any questions they had about mental hygiene.
– In 2023 we produced a podcast called Let’s Talk Mental Hygiene, co-hosted by yours truly alongside our expert, Guillaume. We covered some of the bigger topics in mental hygiene in greater depth, sometimes with guests.
We received so many glowing testimonials from participants, and every single one warmed our hearts. People told us that mental hygiene was easy to fold into daily routines and that it helped make caring for their mental health feel more intuitive, and even fun.
I remember chatting with a volunteer at our organization about the mental hygiene challenge. She told me – apologetically – that she didn’t have time to really dig in, but that she had picked up one thing that genuinely helped her get through her most stressful moments. It was the simplest practice in our toolkit, to take deep breaths.
It’s what I do too, and now I do it without even thinking about it.
The final challenge took place in 2025, but I hope the people who heard about it over the years – whether they read a social media post or caught a segment on the news – tried out a few of the practices. I hope something from that project stayed with them, like it stayed with me.
