Mental Health Awareness Month: When Awareness Perpetuates Systems of Harm

May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

I forget this every year until I start seeing posts and articles talking about it.

Even though I’m a mental health practitioner and consumer, I don’t tend to find things like Awareness Months terribly helpful, and so I definitely have some feelings about the month that claims to want to help people who need mental health support.

Now, I do want to offer a caveat up front that I don’t think every single person honoring this month is problematic. I know plenty of colleagues and organizations who do good work and use this kind of splashy framework to help move forward some really important ideas.

As in many things in this work, it isn’t binary, and there’s lots of room for nuance.

And also…that doesn’t mean I don’t have some *feelings* about it.

One of my biggest frustrations with themed months like this—and especially related to mental health—is that “awareness” already exists. We pretty categorically recognize that mental health needs exist. And although there might be some of us who maybe aren’t as conscious of these needs or the collective struggle, I don’t know many people who aren’t aware that people are depressed, anxious, struggling, unsupported.

But we have months like this and think, “Well great, we just need more awareness!” And so we make posts, hashtags, charitable donations, and we have the feeling that we’re moving the needle. More people are aware now! Change is inevitable now!

Awareness is important, yes. But it’s the top layer of something that has glacial depth, and when we focus only or primarily on making people aware, we tend to neglect all the other layers…including some of the roots of why mental health struggles exist (or why we consider them “problems” in the first place).

For the vast majority of us, it’s going to be pretty challenging to feel emotionally well under capitalism. Patriarchy harms every single one of us, even if in different ways depending on our gender. Racism crushes us all, even as some of us have the privilege of being harmed less/differently by it than others. Colonialism and imperialism have set our world on fire, and we’re told that militarism is the only way out, even though it just serves to pour gasoline onto the growing flames. Hatred of LGBTQ+ people and values makes it feel nearly impossible for people in those communities to live and thrive, and wouldn’t any of us feel our mental health impacted if we’re constantly told our full authentic selves are inherently bad?

We can have all the awareness that we want. Awareness that we’re struggling, and that life feels hard, and people are choosing to not be alive anymore rather than tolerate one more minute of their inner torment. And it’s important to have awareness of that.

But can we also have the awareness that it’s these harmful systems at work that are making it super fucking hard to thrive?

Can we have awareness that we’ve medicalized our mental and emotional experiences because it’s easier to box them in as individual problems rather than a reasonable response to being crushed by inequity?

Can we use this awareness to push back on policies that perpetuate these harms, and to create new systems and structures that better support collective needs?

Wouldn’t that be more productive than just being aware that mental health issues exist?

I don’t know, sometimes I feel like these “awareness months” aren’t really seeking any kind of resolution to the struggles they claim to care about.

Sometimes it feels like it’s a box to check off: Ok, I know more about how many people are depressed and how inaccessible resources are, I’ve done it.

But awareness of a problem is bullshit without acknowledgement of the why.

And experiences like depressed mood, anxiousness, shame, guilt, eating challenges, and infintely more would be entirely different experiences in a world that is set up to actually meet needs, support us, and honor the diversity of our inner lives.

All of these harmful -isms not only are root causes for our mental health challenges, but they also make it so much harder to live with these issues, in part because these systems point the finger and say “This is a problem and you need to fix it.”

Can it feel really fucking hard to live with depression? Yes, absolutely. And also, if I lived in a world where my depression was responded to differently, where I felt more seen and supported and honored for the particular way I move through the world, rather than be told I have a bad problem that I shouldn’t have, would my relationship with my depression be perhaps somewhat less fraught? Probably.

I’ve already said it but I’ll say it again: It’s not that awareness is inherently problematic. It is crucial.

But it can also serve as a distraction…one that makes us feel like it’s the end of the line, when it’s actually just the very first step to change-making.

Can we figure out how to feel better in a capitalist, patriarchal, racist, inequitable society? Yes, for sure…otherwise, why would we keep trying to improve anything? Hope is vital in this work, and in our day-to-day lives.

But does "mental health awareness” do anything without a deeper understanding of how these systems are an integral part to us having a “mental health problem” in the first place? No, absolutely not.

So, this month, may we all be more aware…aware of the ways in which we participate in these systems—willingly and unconsciously—and the ways in which we can help them to crumble.

May we become more aware of the importance community has for our mental wellbeing.

May we be acutely aware of the small ways we can push against the “shoulds” that these systems shove onto us, so that we can get back into nature, into our bodies, into our full and thriving selves.

May we be aware of the labels we put on mental and emotional experiences and constantly question who those labels serve and why.

May we be aware of the limitations of charity and how charitable organizations can be both temporarily vital and also will only ever be a bandaid at best.

May we be aware of the value that our society places on us solely as laborers to make more money for billionaires, and to recognize how that might make it feel like an uphill battle to feeling well mentally and emotionally.

And may we be aware of how there have been people doing this work for decades and that it is not hopeless…the work will continue, and we can keep moving from awareness to action, in any way we can.

Our mental wellbeing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Let’s not let “Mental Health Awareness Month” make us forget that.