Still Broken After All These Years? What Mental Health Awareness Month isn’t telling you and why it matters now more than ever
By Sonya Davie, LMHC, INHC, CMHIMP · Founder, Sonya Davie Wellness
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Social media fills up with encouraging posts, breathwork reminders, and the gentle nudge to “reach out.” And I’m here for all of it… truly.
But I’m also a licensed mental health counselor with 17 years of experience, and I think we owe it to ourselves to have a more honest conversation this month.
Because the mental health system? It is still broken in ways that directly impact your care and your safety.
The psychiatrist shortage is real, and it is getting worse!
Here’s something most people don’t know until they’re in crisis: the United States is facing a severe shortage of psychiatrists.
Nearly 59 million Americans, almost a quarter of the population, have a mental illness, yet 46% receive no treatment, largely because there simply aren’t enough mental health professionals to serve them.1 More than 122 million Americans live in areas officially designated as mental health care shortage zones.2
And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. HRSA projects a national shortage of over 43,000 adult psychiatrists by 2038,3 and about 60% of the current psychiatrist workforce is 55 or older — meaning a wave of retirements is already underway.3 In the meantime, people in need are landing in primary care offices with 15-minute appointment windows, or they’re going without help entirely.
“Convenience is not the same as care. An algorithm cannot hear the desperation in your voice — or notice that your hands are shaking.”
To fill the gap left by the psychiatrist shortage, some telehealth platforms and even state governments are turning to artificial intelligence.
Utah recently approved a pilot program allowing an AI system to authorize refills for select psychiatric medications — with the state waiving professional licensing requirements to make it possible.4 An independent security review of the chatbot technology involved found alarming vulnerabilities, including instances where adversarial prompts led the AI to make dangerous prescribing recommendations.4
The American Psychiatric Association has been clear on this:
AI should support clinician judgment — not replace it.
Allowing automated systems to make medication decisions raises serious patient safety concerns, and errors in psychiatric prescribing can have immediate and lasting consequences.5
Convenience is not the same as care.
We have to be honest about what we are normalizing here.
Prescribing without investigating…
Here is perhaps the most frustrating pattern I see in my clinical work:
Patients are handed psychiatric prescriptions without any meaningful investigation into what is actually driving their symptoms.
No comprehensive nutrient panel. No thyroid workup. No inquiry into gut health, sleep cycles, hormonal factors, or the many biological variables that can look exactly like depression, anxiety, or ADHD but aren’t.
The current standard in most settings remains: describe your symptoms, receive a prescription, come back in four to six weeks.
That approach ignores the reality that many mental health symptoms have identifiable, addressable root causes. When we skip the investigation, we skip the opportunity actually to heal, not just manage.
We can, and must, do better!!! (And I mean that loudly.)
Chronic stress: the symptom we keep ignoring
On top of a struggling system, the people showing up for care are dealing with chronic, unrelenting stress. Not the kind that a yoga class fixes.
The kind that lives in the body — elevated cortisol, disrupted sleep, suppressed immune function, gut imbalances, and a nervous system that never fully comes off high alert.
Long-term exposure to chronic stress creates real biological and emotional impacts that contribute to depression, anxiety, PTSD, and more.
The data backs this up. In 2024, 43% of adults reported feeling more anxious than the year before.7 About 78% of Americans reported losing sleep over financial worries, and job stress alone costs U.S. employers more than $300 billion a year in lost productivity, absenteeism, and healthcare costs.7
With this in mind, lifestyle practices like nutrition, movement, rest, and nervous system regulation are no longer just optional add-ons to mental health care.
Research consistently shows that lifestyle interventions, including physical activity, dietary changes, and sleep hygiene, meaningfully reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress.8
But telling someone who is overwhelmed and under-resourced to “practice more self-care” without giving them real, practical tools is not support. It’s dismissal.
People need information they can actually use, and support that meets them where they are.
Before You Medicate — Investigate
This is exactly why I wrote my new book.
Before You Medicate — Investigate was written to give you the knowledge and questions you need to be an informed, active participant in your own mental health care. Not to replace your provider, but to walk into that appointment prepared.
To know what questions to ask. To understand what options exist. To feel less alone in a system that too often leaves people without answers.
Whether you are just beginning to explore medication, have been on psychiatric meds for years, or are supporting a loved one through this process, this book is for you.
RELEASE COMING SOON…
What you can do right now…
Mental Health Awareness Month is a good reminder to check in with yourself and the people around you. But awareness without action only goes so far. Here are a few things I encourage this month:
Ask more questions.
Before accepting any psychiatric prescription, ask:
Have my nutrition or labs been checked? Have we explored what might be driving these symptoms? What does the evidence say about my situation?
Take your stress seriously.
Chronic stress is not a personality flaw. It is a physiological state that changes your brain and body over time. Treat it like the health issue it is, because it is one.
Stay connected to real information.
Follow clinicians and advocates who offer science-backed, integrative perspectives, not just symptom management and prescription checklists.
Above all, know that you deserve care that actually investigates what is happening in your body and your life.
Not just a prescription and a follow-up appointment three months from now. That is what this month is really about.
REFERENCES:
- Medical Society of the State of New York. (2025, February). Mind the gap: Addressing the growing psychiatrist shortage in the U.S. mssny.org
- America’s Health Rankings. (2025). Mental health providers in the United States. americashealthrankings.org
- PracticeSeeker. (2026). Demand for psychiatrists: Addressing the shortage and job outlook. practiceseeker.com
- Medscape. (2026, April). AI chatbot prescribing psychiatric medications raises red flags. medscape.com
- American Psychiatric Association. (2026, March). AI prescribing. psychiatry.org
- PMC / NIH. (2025). Trauma, stress, and mental health outcomes. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- SingleCare. (2026). Stress statistics 2026: How common is it & who’s most affected? singlecare.com
- PMC / NIH. (2024). The effect of lifestyle interventions on anxiety, depression and stress: A systematic review and meta-analysis. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
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