Happy Friday!

Today is World Emoji Day. It honors the cultural impact and creative use of emojis in modern communication. The date was specifically chosen because it matches the date displayed on the standard iOS calendar emoji.

Founded by Jeremy Burge—creator of the emoji reference site Emojipedia—the first World Emoji Day was celebrated in 2014. Emojis themselves originally emerged in Japan in the late 1990s as small, digital pictographs used to enhance text-based messages.

People typically celebrate the day by communicating exclusively using emojis and sharing emoji-themed art online.

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Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly just announced it will acquire AtaiBeckley for up to $3.8 billion, gaining access to a groundbreaking pipeline that includes BPL-003 — a synthetic form of 5-MeO-DMT delivered as a nasal spray — which in Phase 2b trials produced rapid and durable reductions in depressive symptoms after a single roughly two-hour in-clinic visit, with benefits persisting for months.

This is particularly significant for the estimated millions of Americans living with treatment-resistant depression, a devastating condition where symptoms persist even after multiple traditional treatments have failed.

Read More: Lilly to acquire AtaiBeckley to advance therapies for treatment-resistant depression and other mental health conditions (PR Newswire)

A clinical dietitian writes about a patient who came to his psychiatric unit for suicidal ideation after losing his SNAP benefits and spending weeks surviving on dry cereal, ultimately concluding that the hospital was a better option than "Plan B" — ending his life.

Research confirms this isn't an outlier: food insecurity directly causes anxiety and depression, and food-insecure patients are significantly more likely to visit the ER multiple times a year, with mental health crises as a key driver — yet the One Big Beautiful Bill cut $863 billion from Medicaid and $295 billion from SNAP simultaneously, targeting the same vulnerable population that relies on both.

Read More: Medicaid and SNAP cuts are exacerbating the intertwined problems of hunger and mental illness (STAT News)

Happiness researcher Cassie Holmes found that people who treat their weekends like a vacation — sleeping in, eating freely, skipping the chores, and just being — reported significantly greater happiness and less Sunday Scaries dread when Monday rolled around, without spending any extra money or taking any additional time off.

The secret wasn't what they did differently, but how they did it — the "vacation mindset" made people more present and mindful, helping them actually savor the small joys already in front of them.

Read More: People Who Spend Their Weekends Sleeping In, Eating & Being Lazy Are Way Happier For One Main Reason (YourTango)

MYTH: Mental health problems are uncommon. I’ll never struggle with any.

FACT: An estimated one in five adults in the U.S. struggle with mental health problems. Beyond the statistic, the number may be even higher due to unreported mental health problems as a result of stigma. The most common of these are depression and anxiety, but they also include bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and more.

The Mental Minute is your #1 source for the latest mental health news, tips, key resources and product reviews. Our goal is to make mental health an everyday conversation.

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Thanks, and Be Well.

— The Mental Minute