According to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), our country is facing an unprecedented mental health crisis. The crisis isn’t just affecting adults, its devastating young people, and people from every background are impacted.
The goal of Mental Health Awareness Month, is to bring attention to mental health and how essential it is to overall health and wellbeing.
Over the last year HHS has helped to facilitate a great number of initiatives, innovative programs and increased funding sources to improve behavioral health care and services for all ages. Not only has the 988 Suicide Prevention Lifeline launched , but there has been expanded mental health services in schools, advanced a center for excellence on social media and mental health, and launched the HHS Roadmap for Behavioral Health Integration. In addition, they have helped states to establish Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics which provide behavioral health care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, because mental health crises don’t just happen during business hours. And we are providing hundreds of millions of dollars to programs like Project AWARE, Mental Health Awareness Training, and the National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative, that help reach families and youth where they are, including at schools and in the community.
Here is an amazing extensive list and fact sheet of the various efforts made by HHS over the past year: