May 2019: Mental Health Awareness Month




May is Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States and other areas of the world.  Many different organizations have themes and information for the month.  This month's blog is a list of places to explore to learn more about mental health and wellness as well as mental illness.  The more we know and understand about mental illness and how common it is, the more we can break down the stigma and misunderstandings about it.




The National Alliance On Mental Illness (NAMI) is using the slogan, "Why Care?" with the tagline:  "Because 1 in 5 people will be affected by mental illness in their lifetime.  Take the time to show that you care about mental health."



Mental Health America (MHA) is continuing the theme from last year of #4mind4body and have a number of resources including toolkits and graphics, which can be found here.



Teenmentalhealth.org has a number of excellent resources for parents and teens including a toolbox, educational information about mental illnesses, the importance of healthy sleep, understanding the teen brain, and an area for support and resources especially for parents.


The National Council for Behavioral Health is offering a number of resources, social media links, and infographics talking about mental health and how to support yourself and others. The National Council also offers Mental Health First Aid trainings which teach people how to support and intervene if they have concerns about adults or children. 

Finally, if video is more your thing, there are more than 70 TED talks which address mental health topics including medication, anxiety, anger, addiction, ADHD, depression, and stress. 


Happy reading/watching! 
--Dr J

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

February 2022: Access To Mental Health Services

How's your mental health these days? It's a good time to check in with yourself to see where you fall on a scale of "totally fine" to "really not okay." If you're feeling like maybe you could benefit from some mental health treatment and support and you decide that you want to see a therapist, how would you go about finding one? It's a good question, right? Access to mental health treatment varies widely depending on a number of factors. Insurance, geography, socioeconomic status, race, gender, sexual orientation... the list goes on and on. While this should not be the case, like so many things in our country, the more demographic boxes you check off, the less likely you are to be able to easily access treatment. Massachusetts has a mental health parity law which essentially says insurers who provide mental health benefits for the diagnosis and treatment of certain mental disorders must do so to the same extent that they cover the diagnosis and treat
Read more

Welcome To The 2022-23 School Year

For all our returning families, welcome back!  For all our new families, welcome!  We can't wait to get started with you all! The start of a school year usually means that we find more structure than we've had for the previous few weeks.  Even when we're working full time, most summer environments are more casual than in the other months.  Dress codes relax, hours may change, we may all be yearning for more time to linger outside when we're having lunch.  As fall creeps towards us, many of us begin to recommit to earlier bedtimes, more working out, less ice cream, more organization overall.  As we begin to pick up our new (or go back to tried and true) routines and rituals, I invite you to think about what these actions provide for you.  Do your routines include time to ground yourself or psych yourself up for what's to come?  Do your rituals provide you with comfort or help you manage and organize yourself?   One habit I encourage you to create is that of reflectin
Read more

June 2020: End Of The Year and Uncertainty

Here we are, nearing the end of the 2019-2020 school year.  In many ways it has been a year like no other. In the span of a few short months, we've gone to meeting in person to meeting on-line and feeling unsure about our health, our safety, and our country. Between the inequities sharply highlighted by the Covid-19 Pandemic and the recent protests against police brutality and inherent inequity for Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), many of us are reeling and wondering what we can do to help.  Many of us are also wondering how to talk to our children about these realities and how we can both protect them and make them active change agents. Rather than telling you what to do, we will remind you that staying connected with each other is an essential component of healthy emotional wellness and isolating yourself has a negative impact on your mental health.  So, please stay connected, check on each other, support each other. There are a number of resources listed belo
Read more