The Awkward Conversation: How to Respond When Someone Tells You They’re Not Okay

“How are you?”

Those three words have become a prescriptive question with a prescriptive answer in today’s society.

When we’re asked how we are, we’re expected to automatically respond with, “Great,” “Good,” or at the very worst, “I’m fine.”

But in a world where 1 in 5 people will experience a mental health or addiction challenge in their lifetime, and 100 percent of people will have a bad day every now and then, why is it that so few of us are prepared to respond when someone tells us they’re not actually doing okay?

That’s exactly the question this recent video from Mental Health First Aid USA seeks to answer.