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.
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.
Get Involved
Mental Health America 2024 Mental Health Month Toolkit
National Alliance on Mental Illness Awareness Events
SAMHSA Mental Health Awareness Month Resources
May 1, 2024 – World Maternal Mental Health Day
May 12-18, 2024 – SAMHSA’s National Prevention Week
May 2, 2024 – National Older Adult Mental Health Awareness Day Symposium
AHA Resources
We are AHA Behavioral Health, 2024
The AHA provides its behavioral health members with valuable benefits, including advocacy, resources and initiatives designed to improve access to and strengthen the delivery of affordable, high-quality behavioral health care. Learn more about AHA’s behavioral health wins in 2023 and 2024.
Integrating Physical and Behavioral Health: The Time is Now
The push for integrated care is not new, but the time to act is now. This issue brief highlights the benefits of integrating physical and behavioral health, including reducing the total cost of care, improving outcomes, and improving workforce satisfaction.
Enhancing Community Connection through Loneliness Prevention Initiatives
In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a shocking 80-plus page advisory declaring loneliness and social isolation as reaching epidemic levels in American society. Listen to AHA members Meritus Health and Indiana University Health share how they’ve addressed this epidemic with patients in their care.
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.
Child & Adolescent Mental Health and Maternal Mental Health Webpages
These 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.
For More Behavioral Health Resources