May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the theme for the 2022 campaign is “Together for Mental Health”. With a growing number of Americans experiencing mental health symptoms, it is vitally important that we join together to address mental health issues and to advocate for improving our nation’s mental health care system. Mental illness has been a major problem in the world and now that we are 2+ years into the pandemic, the situation has only become worse.

Below are a few statistics for 2020 (first year of the pandemic):
21% of U.S. adults experienced a mental illness and 5.6% of adults experienced a serious mental illness.
16.7% of the youth experiences a major depressive disorder (3 million had serious thoughts of suicide).
33% of young adults experienced a mental illness and 10% experienced a serious mental illness.
20% of Americans indicated that the pandemic had a significant negative impact on their mental health.

During the rest of May, the SJUMC Mental Health Ministries team will be providing information and resources to help you better understand mental illness, to advocate for better healthcare for mental illness, and to help eliminate the stigma associated with mental illness. Stay tuned.