If you’re like most people, chances are at one point or another you’ve ended a December with some New Year’s resolutions in mind. Maybe you don’t call it a resolution – personally, I like setting goals and feel it can be done anytime you want. However, we like to use the end of the year as a moment of reflection – what we want to change going into the new year. Whether it’s something specific like, “I’m going to lose eleven pounds by summer,” or something more forgiving like, “I’m going to try to be more punctual,” many of us view the striking of midnight on January 1st as a chance for a reset.
Putting aside the fact that an overwhelming majority of New Year’s resolutions are given up on sometime during the year – 71 percent of U.S. adults polled said they did not achieve or keep their 2020 resolution (behavior change is hard, but totally possible!) – there is a wishful but incorrect mindset that, we all get to start fresh, at zero, bright and early on New Year’s Day.
This is hardly the case.
Even if you decline that last flute of champagne and get to bed before the ball drop for a full eight hours of sleep, we’re heading into 2022 with undoubtedly worsening mental health concerns that we have accrued over, at least, the last 20 months of living through a global pandemic. By now we all know or have heard about someone who has gotten sick or died. Someone who lost a loved one and was unable to attend a funeral or memorial. Weddings, birthdays, baby showers, graduations, and plenty of other occasions have had to go unattended or uncelebrated.
It’s just a given that this would tank Americans’ mental health, and we likely won’t be able to calculate the full extent of its impact for years. And while there was an increase in Americans reporting mental health symptoms as well as an increase in behavioral health telemedicine appointments made since the start of the pandemic, the Kaiser Family Foundation also recently found that nearly 27 percent of adults who experienced mental health symptoms like anxiety or depression were unable to have their counseling or therapy needs met. In another more recent poll, Americans view mental health care as the toughest to get, compared to other services like primary and emergency health care.
I propose, then, that heading into 2022, what’s needed is not individual self-improvement, but a collective, society-wide resolution to expand access to mental health care. This begins with you. You are the frontline of mental health delivery in this country whether or not you realize it. Friends and family will come to you likely before anyone else and we all need to be better equipped on what to say and how to help.
At a systems level, we need to integrate mental health care into primary health care. Bringing these much needed services together is just flat out good for people. Continuing the theme of bringing mental health to where people are, we also need to give K-12 schools the support they need to address the escalating challenges their students are facing. That’s exactly what the Hopeful Futures campaign run by Inseparable is doing. And we need to destigmatize mental health struggles through education so that people who are suffering no longer feel the need to do so in silence. This must be done thoughtfully at a structural and social level.
By helping those who need it most, we can all work toward that happy New Year.
My Top Posts of 2021
As a mental health leader, I share my words with the world in hopes of raising awareness about the importance of radical and systemic reform. When I post something, I have no expectation of its reach or impact, and so I am humbled by the engagement and amazing feedback I have received from each of you. I thought I’d highlight a few of the more popular posts, based on reader response, from this past year.
● The Three Things We REALLY Need to Start Asking Each Other
● Mental Health: In Tennis and In the Workplace
● We Need to Support Children’s Mental Health Immediately. Here’s How.
● A Big Break After a Big Week
● Getting serious about social media and mental health
I am grateful for each and every one of you reading this right now, and I am confident that if we can persevere, we can affect real change. Happy New Year to you and your loved ones!