Action Anxiety Day in Canada Date in the current year: June 10, 2024

Anxiety is a feeling of uneasiness and worry over anticipated events. It is closely related to fear; the main difference between the two is that fear is a response to a perceived present threat, whereas anxiety is the anticipation of a future one. Anxiety can be acute, i.e. experienced in short spurts with panic attacks, and chronic (generalized), with drawn-out daily symptoms, which can be emotional (i.e. feeling tense, trouble concentrating, feelings of dread), behavioral (foot tapping, pacing, changes in habits, sleeping patterns or food intake), and physiological (headaches, muscle tension, fatigue, nausea, etc.).

Anxiety in itself is not a mental health disorder; everyone experiences it at some point in their lives. However, persistent anxiety may develop into one of the multiple anxiety-related disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or selective mutism. There is a lot of stigma surrounding these disorders because many people believe that anxiety is not a real medical diagnosis and people with anxiety could easily turn it off, they just don’t want to. Action Anxiety Day was created to combat this stigma.

Action Anxiety Day (AAD) was launched by Anxiety Canada, a registered charity that works to raise awareness about anxiety and anxiety-related disorders, including OCD and PTSD, and provide access to proven resources and evidence-based treatment. The main goals of AAD are to raise awareness about anxiety, promote anxiety education, dispel common myths about anxiety and reduce the stigma surrounding it, and highlight the importance of prioritizing mental health in our society.

The official hashtag for Action Anxiety Day is #ACTonAnxiety, which means:

• A for awareness: raising awareness about anxiety and educating about trusted, evidence-based resources for coping with anxiety.
• C for colors: wearing anxiety awareness colors (blue and orange) on June 10 to show support and start conversations about the campaign.
• T for talking: sharing your stories about anxiety and encouraging others to share theirs to show people struggling with anxiety that they are not alone and break the stigma together.

There are many ways to get involved with AAD. You can donate to Anxiety Canada or any other charity that helps people affected by anxiety and anxiety-related disorders, start a fundraising campaign to encourage others to donate, organize an awareness event at a local school, wear orange and blue and/or spread awareness on social media with the hashtags #ActionAnxietyDay and #ACTonAnxiety, or participate in ACT on Anxiety Challenge. The idea behind the challenge is to challenge yourself to prioritize your mental health in one of two ways: by sticking to a 30-day self-care ritual (for example, taking an hour-long walk every day) or working towards facing a fear for 30 days.