May is Mental Health Awareness Month

May is a time to raise awareness of those living with mental or behavioral health issues and to help reduce the stigma so many experience. Hospitals and health systems play an important role in providing behavioral health care and helping patients find resources available in their community.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Man comforted during behavioral health counseling therapy.

 

As Mental Health Awareness Month, May is a time to raise awareness of and reduce the stigma surrounding behavioral health issues, as well as highlighting the ways how mental illness and addiction can affect all of us – patients, providers, families, and our society at large.

Hospitals and health systems play an important role in the conversations we have around mental health care, including creating partnerships that address behavioral health issues in non-traditional ways. Many of our members are creating new innovations around how behavioral health disorders are identified and treated—through the integration of physical and behavioral health services, changes in their emergency departments and inpatient and outpatient settings. These strategies improve the overall value of health care and can lead to improvements in patient outcomes, quality of care and total costs.

As part of its long-standing commitment to supporting all organizations that work in the realm of behavioral health care, AHA supports the integration of behavioral and physical health, and will continue to help hospitals as they play key roles in establishing partnerships and programs to ensure access to the full continuum of behavioral health care for all who need it.

AHA Resources

Blog: Illuminating Mental Health Equity in Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities

Read how hospitals and health systems can tackle growing mental health concerns amongst AAPI communities through data and community engagement.


Blog: Burnout: The New Pandemic

Health care has always been a demanding profession, and the effects of the last few years have meant that health care workers have been asked to do more with less.


Blog: Supporting the Behavioral Health of Older Americans

In addition to Mental Health Awareness Month, May is Older Americans Month.  Arpan Waghray, M.D., CEO, Providence’s Well Being Trust, and Past Chair of the  American Hospital Association Committee on Behavioral Health, discusses senior mental health and offers resources on mental health in older adults.


Blog: Public health emergency ends but the mental health emergency continues

With the COVID-19 pandemic receding from the national headlines and public health emergency (PHE) winding down later this month, it’s imperative to reflect on the pandemic’s impact on mental health care in the United States, and how we must adapt to face the ongoing challenge of providing mental health care services to our communities.


Child & Adolescent Mental Health and Maternal Mental Health Webpages

These new resources pages are designed to provide information, resources, and best practices to better support hospitals and health systems in addressing child and adolescent mental health and maternal mental health.


People Matter, Words Matter

The AHA, together with behavioral health and language experts from member hospitals and partner organizations, has released a series of downloadable posters to help your employees adopt patient-centered, respectful language. Please consider downloading, printing and sharing each poster with your team members and encourage them to use this language both in front of patients and when talking to colleagues. People matter and the words we use to describe them or the disorders they have matter.


Opioid Stewardship

The resources on this webpage illustrate how hospitals and health systems are working to “Stem the Tide” of the opioid epidemic – but much work remains.


Suicide Prevention in the Health Care Workforce

AHA is pleased to offer resources that make it easier for hospitals and health systems to discover proven strategies and deploy best practices that improve the mental health and wellbeing of their staff and breathe new life into America’s most trusted professionals.


 

More Mental Health Awareness Month Resources