mental health month

Mental Health Awareness Month 2025

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Well, here we are again – it’s Mental Health Awareness Month! Even though I feel like I say this every year, mental health is more important than ever. Whether it’s our own mental health or supporting others, there is a lot of awareness to raise and stories to share. So, as I do most years, I want to highlight a few campaigns to follow during Mental Health Awareness Month. Hopefully they resonate with you or someone you know; regardless of how you get involved, I hope this month is a helpful one in learning more about your own mental health, or mental health in general.

Mental Health America – “Turn Awareness Into Action”

Mental Health America is the organization that founded Mental Health Awareness Month in 1949. Since then, they’ve done an amazing job highlighting different aspects of mental health. This year, their theme is “Turn Awareness into Action,” which I love. The theme was chosen with the goal (Per Wikipedia) of:

“Celebrating the progress we’ve made in recognizing the importance of mental health — and challenging us to turn understanding into meaningful steps toward change.”

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: awareness is important, but it’s just the first step when it comes to mental health. Turning awareness into action is a catchy tagline, but it’s harder than it sounds. You have to overcome so many challenges to get from awareness to action – things like bias, stigma, your own struggles, understanding the challenges…the list goes on. By emphasizing how we can take meaningful steps, MHA is driving change with action – a cause we can all get behind.

National Alliance on Mental Illness – “In Every Story There is Strength”

Since you’re reading a mental health blog this won’t shock you to read, but I still need to say it: I love this theme. I’ve always believed that each of us has a story when it comes to mental health, and every story matters. I’m glad to see NAMI agrees! From their website:

“In Every Story, There’s Strength,” highlights the resilience and diverse experiences that shape mental health journeys within our community. NAMI’s campaign celebrates the power of storytelling to fuel connection, understanding, and hope for those navigating their own mental health path.

Sharing our stories is brave. It’s important. It matters. There are no unimportant stories about mental health; you never know what sharing your story will mean to someone, what it could teach them about mental health or about themselves. There is power and strength in talking about mental health and the more we do it, the more we shrink the stigma and bring the conversation to the forefront.

SAMHSA – Mental Health Awareness Month Toolkit

What I love that SAMHSA (the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) does during Mental Health Awareness Month their toolkit! This toolkit that gives you everything you need to know and features vital information and resources about mental health. Key messaging, content, and messages of support just a few of the things inside, providing everything you need to raise your voice this month! SAMHSA’s work highlights an important connection between substance abuse and mental health challenges. This connection is often ignored or misunderstood, and one that all of us should pay more attention to.

What You Can Do During Mental Health Awareness Month

I won’t pretend that it’s an easy time to talk about mental health awareness right now. Things are changing faster than we can react to them, and they are constant. Everyone is just trying to stay afloat, and doing things like raising awareness and talking about hard things may not be ideal for you right now. That’s okay! Another good thing this month brings is a chance to check in. Whether it’s checking in on ourselves, our loved ones, or how those around us are taking care of their mental health, this month is a good time to try and reset on our approach to mental health and set us up for success in the days and months ahead. As I wrote this time last year:

“Whether we acknowledge it or not, mental health impacts us all. Mental Health Awareness Month is a time to shine a spotlight on this fact, to learn to live in a happy and healthy way.

And as always, that is the main takeaway. I’m sending positive thoughts and vibes to my readers as we continue to shrink the stigma and raise awareness on the topic of mental health.

What will you be doing to raise awareness during Mental Health Awareness Month? I’d love to hear it! Let me know in the comments.

Five Ways I Build Mental Wellness

Nathan Smith6 Comments

As it is Mental Health Awareness Month, it’s a good time to share resources, tips and techniques about mental health and wellness. After a decade-plus of living with depression and anxiety, I am proud of how I’ve learned to manage my mental health challenges. However, chronic mental health issues can mean I sometimes go through my day on auto-pilot, which isn’t great for my mental health. That’s why I want to re-share a few things I turn to when I want to work on my health and build mental wellness. While there are a lot more tips and techniques in this area, these are five things that work well for me. Hope you find this information helpful!

Meditation

My journey with meditation has been lengthy, but I’m finally at a place where I can confidently say it’s part of my mental health toolkit. Meditation has grown in its importance and value in my day-to-day life, and I’d say there are more days than not that I get in a meditation session or two. What I enjoy most about meditation is that I’ve stopped seeing it as a solution to my problems, and more as a practice and way of being. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say meditation is the perfect solution for everyone (I’ve tried it more than a few times), it doesn’t hurt to try!

Exercise

You might already be aware, but physical exercise can play a big role in improving one’s mental health. While it’s important to make sure people have a healthy relationship with exercise and working out, I know that it can also be damaging to only do things when I have the proper motivation (thank you, depression!). Exercising, in any capacity, has the opportunity to give someone a brief confidence boost, raise the heart rate more than it might previously, and make us feel like we have accomplished something. There are many other benefits to physical exercise, but I’ve come to appreciate the benefits to my mental health and wellness more than anything else.

Therapy (There’s More Than One Type!)

Shocker, I know – a mental health blogger suggesting therapy. But I want to go beyond the generic “therapy is good for you” advice and take things a step further. Instead of suggesting that people look into therapy more, I want you challenge what your idea of therapy is. Yes, there is sitting in a room with a therapist, or on a Zoom call with a mental health professional; but therapy is so much more than that. There are several types of talk therapy, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectal Behavior Therapy (DBT), Mentalization-based therapy (MBT) and so many more. And even beyond that, there are types of therapy that involve activities and movement, going beyond talking and trying to meet the needs of other parts of who we are. I’m not here to say that therapy will solve all your problems, but it is often a safe place to figure out where you can start.

Getting to Know Myself

One important part of building my mental wellness is improving my relationship with someone very important — myself. We spend our entire lives getting to know ourselves, understanding who we are and how we see the world. But there are some things about ourselves that are hard to come to terms with. Maybe it’s part of our personality, or an experience we went through, but all of these things encompass who we are and why we act the way we do. When I think about my mental health challenges, I know that there are aspects of my personality don’t play a significant role in why I deal with anxiety and depression. But those aspects do make up the person I am, and understanding how I see the world helps me understand how it impacts me. I know this might sound a little off-the-wall but the more I’ve focused on understanding why I do things, the more I’ve understood my mental health challenges.

Reflection

Whether it’s through journaling, talking with people or simply sitting and doing some thinking, reflecting on my mental health journey has done some amazing things for my mental wellness. When I reflect on the journey I’ve had, I can see my growth. I can see the improvements I’ve made, and the ways I’ve gotten better at managing anxiety and depression. Upon reflection, I can also look at the ups and downs with a gentler lens that I’d been able to before. I’m not perfect, and I’m never going to be. But rather than chase perfectionism and “getting rid of” my mental health challenges, my reflection leads to gratitude. To being proud of who I am and what I’ve experienced. And it’s that attitude that has made me stronger, braver, and better equipped to face the challenges that I know lie ahead of me. And I know that upon reflection of what we’ve been through, many people reading this might feel the same way.

While these are important ways to build mental health and wellness, they’re far from the only ones! What do you do to build mental wellness in your day-to-day life, and what helps you work on your mental health? Let me know in the comments below!

Mental Health Awareness Month 2023

Nathan Smith3 Comments

May is a special one on My Brain’s Not Broken – it’s Mental Health Awareness Month! Since 1949, May has been Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States. This is a month dedicated to sharing stories and resources to raise mental health awareness. Various mental health organizations have themes and focuses for Mental Health Awareness Month. To start this month off, I wanted to highlight a few campaigns to keep an eye on. Regardless of how you do it, I hope this is a great month for raising awareness and hope for many!

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Why Mental Health Awareness Is Important

Nathan Smith2 Comments

May means one thing on My Brain’s Not Broken – it’s time to talk about mental health awareness! May is Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States, which means it’s a time where there is added emphasis on how we talk about mental health in this country. And before I dive into that topic (which I’ll revisit later this month), I want to talk about the concept of mental health awareness. There’s a big misconception that the only people who have mental health are people who experience mental illness. And this month, I’m here to tell you that spreading mental health awareness is important because we ALL have mental health.

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Wrapping Up Mental Health Awareness Month 2021

Nathan Smith3 Comments

Hi everyone! Since Mental Health Awareness Month is coming to a close, I wanted to share some of the things I’ve read and seen this month that have inspired me on my own mental health journey. I also wanted to create a space where I could reflect on the writing I’ve done this month and how it could be helpful on your mental health journey as well! Let’s dive in:

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Focusing On Mental Health And What’s Next

Nathan Smith6 Comments

This month on My Brain’s Not Broken, I decided to intentionally focus on the pandemic’s impact on mental health. We’re also closing out Mental Health Awareness Month, and I’ve been very pleased to see the content that people have created and the wonderful ways that people have embraced conversations about mental health. Today, I want to focus on what’s ahead – not necessarily on what our mental health should look like after the pandemic (if that’s even a thing), but what we can do now. We’ve been living this way for 15 months now, and that’s brought a renewed focus on how we can better take care of ourselves in many ways, including mental health.

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Four Ways to Spread Mental Health Awareness

Nathan Smith5 Comments

I’ve said this plenty of times before on the blog, but I talk about mental health a lot. It’s a topic constantly on my mind, and the more I discuss it the more it comes up in every day life. I view mental health as a key part of people’s lives, which is what makes Mental Health Awareness Month so important as a mental health advocate. But how do you spread awareness about a topic as broad and far-ranging as mental health? Where does a person even start? Today, I’m sharing four of the biggest ways that I spread mental health awareness in my work, and how each of these ways works to shrink the stigma and start a discussion about mental health.

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Mental Health Awareness Month 2021

Nathan Smith7 Comments

It’s May, which means that it’s another big month for mental health! May is Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States, an annual event that raises national awareness for mental health. While mental health awareness happens year-round, this month is a time for specific conversations about shrinking the mental health stigma and advocating for the mental health policies and services that people need. Different organizations will have various themes, and this month is a good time for the mental health community to come together and advocate for what we ALL need to maintain mental wellness. Here are a few campaigns to keep an eye on this month!

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First Steps to Getting Help for Mental Health Issues

Nathan Smith2 Comments

Getting help for anything can be hard. For mental health? In my experience, it can be one of the most difficult things to do. There are so many reasons for why people can’t get the help they need. A lack of information and resources can make people feel like it’s more work than it’s worth. Figuring out how to find affordable mental health care can be another mountain to climb (insurance, you suck). And of course, there is the stigma of it all. So let’s take it back to the beginning. If you – or someone you know – is struggling with mental health issues, how can you take the first step to get help? Here are some things to consider.

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What’s the Right Definition of Mental Health?

Nathan Smith6 Comments

I’ll be honest – I had a totally different idea for today’s blog post. I was going to talk about how we define mental health and, using some definitions I found, introduce ways that we can recognize the practice of mental health in our lives. But after looking up those definitions, I couldn’t. Because after looking at two differing definitions for even a moment, it was clear why there’s confusion about what mental health actually is.

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