What is menhera?

Menhera is an awareness and recovery movement based around mental health. It started on websites just like this one; personal blogs and forums on the web in the 2000s.

To understand menhera, context is needed about the culture around mental health in Japan. Here, mental health struggles are seen as a burden, and as something shameful. People who struggle with their health are encouraged continually to hide it away and deal with it silently so that they don't bother others. Mental health care is incredibly hard to come by, and you're far more likely to end up in a psychiatric ward than ever get therapy. Because of this, as well as other cultural factors, Japan has an incredibly high suicide rate.

In the early 2000s, a small community began to form online of people struggling with their mental health and seeking a way to cope. They began to share vent art that expressed their struggles, and to share advice and reassurance with each other that they couldn't find elsewhere. These people started out calling themselves "mental healthers", but this would eventually be shortened to "menhera."

As time went on, the community grew online, and people came together with their struggles and advocated for themselves and each other. However, during a violent assault case committed by a young woman in Japan, said woman's Twitter username was revealed: "menheragod". This was the first time the word had ever come into the public eye, and searching it online brought up vent art and discussions that were by far considered violent and shameful by cultural standard.

Because of this, the general public began to view "menhera" as a dirty word, someone crazy you didn't want to be associated with. Women who were obviously struggling with their health began to be referred to with the slur "menherakei." However, in spite of this, the true meaning of menhera carried on underground. In the 2010s, greatly due to icons like Kuua Oyasumi, a fashion came to be associated with the community: loose, comfortable styles with vent art and medical motifs. Popular menhera began to use their platforms to speak up about the treatment of mental health in Japan.

Today, menhera still thrives. It has helped to bring more discussion about mental health into the public eye, and has even reached the west, greatly due to tumblr blog menheratic and the people who contribute it. Many continue to utilize menhera as a safe space for mental illness, trauma, developmental disorder, physical disability, lgbt, and general discrimination struggles alike.

What does menhera mean to me?

As a disabled and mentally ill teen growing up in Japan, menhera provided me a comfort that I couldn't find anywhere else. It showed me people I could connect to, artforms to express myself, and understanding that I wasn't alone. I'll always be grateful for everything menhera has done for me over the years!