Think about brushing your teeth. Chances are, you did it this morning—and you’ll do it again tonight—without giving it a second thought. It’s such a natural part of your daily routine that you probably don’t even remember doing it. It’s ordinary, almost automatic, and yet incredibly important for your overall health. Now, imagine if mental health care was the same way: built into your daily life, simple, effective, and so routine you barely noticed it. Instead, mental health often feels like an afterthought—something we only address in crisis or once a week in a therapist’s office. But what if we reimagined mental health care as a daily practice, as ingrained in our routines as brushing our teeth?
What does it mean to take care of our dental health?
If you ask most Americans, you’ll hear something like…
- On a daily basis, you should brush your teeth twice a day.
- On an annual basis, going to your annual dentist appointment.
- If you have hiccups along the way, head to the first aid aisle of CVS and you’ll find a myriad of support: painkillers, mouthwash, a myriad of products to enable immediate-pain-relief.
- And if crisis ensues, call a dentist (maybe even the hospital).
This is a “system” we were all indoctrinated into since birth, something we have practiced starting as children that has been reinforced by school health classes, school nurses, parents, and the likes.
What does it mean to take care of our mental health?
Here’s the problem – right now, we only have therapy. And in the absence of daily exercises to support our mental health, annual check-ins to maintain mental health, and products to enable instant pain relief, we face two huge issues:
(1) We suffer, and we suffer in silence. Right now, the average person waits 11 years to seek care after first facing symptoms of mental illness[1]. Imagine waiting 11 years to see a dentist—or going that long without brushing your teeth. And that results in a world with staggering rates of mental illness. 76% of working adults had a symptom of mental illness last year alone and 40% of people say they’ve experienced an increase in need for mental health treatment[2].
(2) We expect therapy to solve more than it can. Imagine never brushing your teeth, never flossing, never attending an annual dentist appointment…and then at 31 years old, reaching a dentist for the first time in your life, and asking them to fix your smile? That is what we do with therapy. We expect a single person, in one hour per week, to solve for 11+ years of untreated mental illness.
To truly address our mental health, we need to establish a similar structure to what we have for physical and dental care – a comprehensive, preventative approach that’s reinforced from childhood and readily available when needed. By developing a framework for mental health that includes daily habits, preventative measures, and accessible tools, we can transform our collective approach to mental health, reducing the silence and suffering so many experience and moving toward a healthier, more resilient society.
SOURCES
- [1] Wang, P.S., Berglund, P.A., Olfson, M., Kessler, R.C. (2004). Delays in initial treatment contact after first onset of a mental disorder. Health Services Research, 39(2). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361014/
- [2] U.S. Surgeon General (2022). New Framework for Mental Health & Well-Being in the Workplace. https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/10/20/us-surgeon-general-releases-new-framework-mental-health-well-being-workplace.html