Mental Health Awareness Month

May is Mental Health Awareness Month! The simple fact that this calendar item exists is a hopeful reminder that we are collectively making progress. For those of us in the mental health profession, it has been a big win, but of course we know there is always much more progress to be made. And that’s okay. We can look ahead to all the ways we see this field expanding while also taking a moment to honor all that has been accomplished.?

?For this month, the question I ask myself is: How can we improve upon our definition of “awareness”?

A recent headline of a Washington Post article reads: “Depression affects about 280 million people worldwide.” The article cites a report published in The Lancet authored by the World Psychiatric Association Commission. The report is rich, detailed, and emphasizes the urgency of our task as mental health advocates toward unified action regarding treating and recognizing major depressive disorder.?

More specifically, it asks the reader to expand the world’s “mental health literacy,” reduce the stigma, and collaboratively work within their communities to remove more of the burden from folks struggling with depression to identify and “fix” it. It even names the stakeholders in this global, ongoing group-project: the general community including people who experienced depression; health care practitioners; researchers and research funders; and the decision makers of our systems.

They also carefully outline ways to improve our collaborative awareness of depression—from early identification within the primary health care system to prevention trials in groups of varying ages, gender identifications, racial backgrounds and socio-economic status. When I think about ways to improve “awareness,” given the world we live in today, this is what I mean – a collective effort. An individual may not have the resources to visit a therapist or may not even see the need or the value of it for themselves. But if they go to their primary care doctor, and that doctor takes the time to ask questions that help identify signs of depression, we have a starting point.?

Another starting point is when publications such as The Washington Post spotlight how common this disorder is in our lives. If we think about how often depression goes undiagnosed, it’s likely that it affects many millions more than the 280,000 million worldwide, we just don’t know it yet. ?The report suggests “half the people suffering from depression in high-income countries are not diagnosed or treated, a number that increases to as much as 90% of those with depression who live in lower-and middle-income countries.”

If 90% of the population anywhere is undiagnosed, that is a whole lot of people walking around quietly carrying the heavy burden of their undiagnosed depressive disorder. That’s why it’s so important for even just one person to be curious and caring enough to ask, “So, how long have you been feeling this way? Does it come and go, or is it constant? Have you been able to find any happiness or pleasure in your life outside of these feelings? Are you sleeping more than usual, not at all? Are you able to take care of yourself in any small way?”?

Asking some of these questions to those in our lives and even to ourselves is key to expanding awareness because depression is not just our mood fluctuating or having a bad day. It is a persistent despair that robs individuals experiencing it from almost any joy or any reprieve. So, to take my question a step further, I ask how we can not only improve our “awareness” but our “literacy”.

In our recent experience with COVID-19, many studies have focused on long-term effects of the virus on our physical health, but emerging research is focusing on long-term effects on our mental health. A fascinating current hypothesis is that individuals who had COVID-19, but were never bedridden, with generally milder symptoms, were consistently at a lower risk of depression over those who had never been diagnosed with the virus at all. For folks who experienced the virus severely, or even lost loved ones, the excruciating pain of facing death and powerlessness over something so inexplicable and confusing is not a pain that seems to be going away.?

This is where I believe improving not only our awareness but our mental health literacy steps in. Because the mere knowledge of one’s depression is not enough. We need to promote the language of mental health. We need to nurture it and help it grow into something tangible, something people can see on a regular basis and not be afraid or ashamed of. It needs to be part of our daily dialogue, in our classrooms, our homes, our offices, our primary care spaces, our public policies. So much of our logical understanding of depression lives in the mind, but it is with language that we communicate, and it is with language that we can begin to heal.?

At NeuroStar, we aim to develop that language between patient and physician, to help them communicate options based on where they find themselves. Our non-drug, non-invasive NeuroStar Advanced Therapy is one such possibility for anyone with depression. We are committed to transforming and uplifting lives, one day at a time. Depression isolates. Neurostar connects.?

#NeuroStarCares #NeuroStar #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth #MentalHealth #DepressionIsolates #NeuroStarConnects