One Mind Joins the Mental Health for US Coalition to Inform Policymakers on Brain Health
One Mind is committed from the heart to catalyzing and implementing collaborative, strategic action across the scale of the brain health crisis. To enable this, One Mind partners with the most influential and impactful brain health coalitions and initiatives that we believe will help us achieve our goal of creating a world where all individuals facing brain health challenges can build healthy, productive lives.
One such partnership is Mental Health for Us, a nonpartisan educational initiative that publicly launches today. As a lead member, we will work with this coalition to ensure that the voices of brain health advocates on the local, state, and national levels are amplified so that the legislators and policymakers include brain health and addiction in their policy conversations.
The numbers supporting this need are startling and concrete policy plans need to be developed to help.
Here’s a high-level snapshot of mental health’s impact:
- One in five American adults—tens of millions of people—will experience a psychiatric illness or substance use disorder in any given year.
- Untreated mental health illness costs the country at least $444 billion per year.
- More than 47,000 people died by suicide in 2017, making suicide the 10th leading cause of death in the United States.
- Every day, more than 130 Americans die from opioid overdose.
Unfortunately, these numbers aren’t new—they are just ignored. Mental Health for US seeks to unite the community under one voice to reach the ears of policymakers in Washington, DC and around the country.
We ask that you join us as we stand with Mental Health for US and envision a future where:
- PREVENTION is integrated in our education and health systems to ensure that brain health is an essential component of overall health;
- We take real action to improve ACCESS AND INTERVENTION so that all Americans are able to find quality, affordable treatment for both the mind and the body; and
- We invest in a variety of RECOVERY services, treatments, and support to ensure everyone who needs it can get the brain health and addiction care that fits their needs.
Through the Mental Health for US initiative and through the other collaborations and brain research One Mind accelerates, we believe that our vision of ‘Healthy Brains for All’ will be achieved. We thank you for your continuing support for and participation in One Mind’s work.
You can learn more about the Mental Health for US as well as the other organizations like One Mind who are participating in this initiative by visiting www.mentalhealthforus.net.