Why Mental Health Awareness?
About one in five Americans experience mental illness each year and about half will experience mental illness at some point in their lifetime.
Many others who do not meet the criteria for a disorder still navigate mental health challenges, like stress, anxiety, and grief.
In particular, more than four in five LGBT+ adults navigate mental illness each year. These mental health challenges affect our mood, our physical health, families, and communities. Persons with mental illness can have a higher likelihood to develop physical issues like cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, higher likelihood of disordered substance use, and higher likelihood of being incarcerated. Of those with mental illness, less than half receive treatment each year.
Only one in three black and Latinx adults with mental illness receive treatment, and one in four Asian adults, compared to half of white adults.
Most insurances do cover treatment for mental illness. Some individuals require hospitalization, especially if they are in crisis. Others need less intensive treatment, for instance, a 3-5 day a week intensive outpatient program to have both psychotherapy and medication management. Other individuals do well with psychotherapy-talk therapy alone.
There are many specific types of therapy and many kinds of therapists. If you have health insurance, call the behavioral telephone number on the back of your insurance card or ask somebody, you know for a therapist that has been helpful for them.
Some individuals require medication to treat their anxiety, depression, addiction, posttraumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, etc. While family practitioners might feel comfortable prescribing these types of medication, the experts in this field are the psychiatrists as well as the advance nurse practitioners specializing in psychiatry. For those with no insurance coverage, a clinical research study might be a first step toward getting treatment. One such facility that offers psychiatric research studies in their anxiety, depression, addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, is the Center for Emotional Fitness in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.