The Importance Of Mental Health Awareness

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Pilot Context
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a national initiative to spread awareness to the constituents of the United States. On April 28, 2016, President Obama issued a Proclamation addressing Mental Health Awareness across the United States. He declared:
Nearly 44 million American adults, and millions of children, experience mental health conditions each year, including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress. This month, we renew our commitment to ridding our society of the stigma associated with mental illness, encourage those living with mental health conditions to get the help they need, and reaffirm our pledge to ensure those who need help have access to the support, acceptance, and resources they deserve. Our Nation has made strong advances in improving prevention, increasing early intervention, and expanding treatment of mental illnesses. And because of more than $100 million in funding from the Affordable Care Act, community health centers have expanded behavioral health services for nearly 900,000 people nationwide over the past 2 years. Still, far too few Americans experiencing mental illnesses do not receive the care and treatment they need. During National Mental Health …show more content…

Stigma refers to any attribute, trait or disorder that labels a person as “unacceptably different” from “normal people” and compounds the already devastating effects of mental health problems. Most people learn what they know about mental illness from the mass media as we are exposed daily to radio, television and newspaper accounts that present people with mental illness as violent, criminal, dangerous, incompetent and fundamentally different from the rest of us. To combat these depictions, anti-stigma education is crucial in changing the attitudes and behaviors of those who don’t understand mental health and

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