Mind Your Mental Health

May is Mental Health Month

• Traditionally, people often hesitated to seek help or even talk about mental health for fear of being judged and facing backlash. However, the issue is now entering more and more of our daily conversations. We’re making progress.
• Talking with others about mental health and medications helps normalize the process of getting behavioral health care — which is just as important as treatments for physical illness.
• The average delay between symptom onset and obtaining treatment is 11 years, meaning a lot of people still spend months or years facing mental health problems before being diagnosed and treated.
• Addressing mental health symptoms early is critically important for your overall health.
• When facing a mental health concern, it’s common to feel like no one understands what you’re going through. However, you aren’t alone. Help is available, and recovery is quite possible.

Throughout the entire month of May, there are a number of nationally recognized themes that you can help promote, including:

• Mental Health Month
• National Maternal Depression Awareness Month
• Women’s Health Month
• National Prevention Week (May 7-14)
• National Anxiety and Depression Awareness Week (May 9-15)
• National Women’s Health Week (May 14-20)
• National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day (May 5)

As many of you may know, May is Mental Health Month. Throughout the month we will be highlighting the importance of speaking openly about mental health. One in five adults in the U.S. experience a mental health condition within a given year. 

Youth mental health is worsening, with severe depression rates continually increasing. While this is important to address year-round, emphasizing mental health awareness during May provides a time for people to come together and help reduce mental illness stigma.

With your help, we can bring awareness to the prevalence of mental health conditions in our communities. It’s our job to help end the stigma surrounding addictions and mental health by sharing resources and starting conversations. Throughout the month of May, we encourage family, friends, and loved ones to learn more about mental health.

Here are some important facts you should know:

• Nearly 1 in 5 American adults will have a diagnosable mental health condition in any given year.
• 46 percent of Americans will meet the criteria for a diagnosable mental health condition sometime in their life, and half of those people will develop conditions by the age of 14.
• Over half (54.7%) of adults with a mental illness do not receive treatment, totaling over 28 million individuals.
• 6.34% of youth in the U.S. reported a substance use disorder in the past year.
• In 2019-2020, 20.78% of adults were experiencing a mental illness. That is equivalent to over 50 million Americans.
• Over 1 in 10 youth in the U.S. are experiencing depression that is severely impairing their ability to function at school or work, at home, with family, or in their social life.

Visit MagellanHealthcare.com/about/bh-resources/mymh or call your program for confidential mental health resources.