By Azi Jankovic, JNS
Outdated thinking needs to be re-evaluated with a focus on a whole-person and community approach to tackling mental-health concerns.
Every May, the same statistic for Mental Health Awareness Month resurfaces: One in five people are diagnosed each year. At first glance, this campaign appears to be a step in the right direction to raise awareness and reduce stigma.
The bigger truth, according to recent research by Harvard University, is that nearly 50% of people will receive a mental-illness diagnosis in their lifetime.
Another uncomfortable but urgent reality is that suicide is now the second-leading cause of death for people under the age of 44 in the United States.
The No. 1 leading cause, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, is “unintentional injury,” with 227,000 deaths annually. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find that more than 102,000 of those deaths, roughly 45% of the total, are from “unintentional poisoning,” a euphemism for drug overdose.
In other words, the two most prevalent causes of death among younger people are drug overdose and suicide, both deeply tied to mental health.
This is not a crisis impacting a small subset of the population. It’s a universal human issue that touches everyone, whether directly or through someone we know.
I made aliyah from the United States and live in Israel now, and the need for honest conversations around mental health feels more urgent than ever. Since Oct. 7, 2023, our entire nation has been living in a state of trauma. Children are waking up with nightmares. Parents are shouldering unbearable stress. Soldiers are returning forever changed—or not returning at all. Even those outside the direct line of fire carry the weight of national grief, uncertainty and psychological fatigue.
In Israel, mental health is not theoretical. It is immediate, it’s real, and it’s demanding our attention. Each year, only 5.2% of Israel’s national health budget is allocated to mental health, just 30% to 50% of what many high-GDP Western countries invest in their systems.
The dominant narrative in mental health is centered on diagnostic labels, lifelong disorders and drug-based interventions have limited efficacy and may cause long-term harm. The treatment narrative must be fundamentally reimagined and not merely repackaged to address the widespread war-related mental-health situation we’re currently facing.
I was 17 when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Within 15 minutes of my first psychiatric appointment, I was told I had a lifelong brain disease, and that I’d need to begin medication immediately and stay on it indefinitely. No one asked about the trauma I had experienced. No one investigated the pain that had kept me from sleeping for days. There were no labs. No scans. Just a label. And a lifetime sentence.
For years, I followed the protocols. Therapy, pills, hospitalizations (seven of them to be exact). It took me decades to realize that the more I complied, the worse I felt. It wasn’t until I began to understand the system and step out of it that I started to feel sustainably well.
I’m not anti-medication. I’m anti-misinformation. I’m not anti-science. I’m simply calling for better science.
The so-called “chemical imbalance” theory, once promoted as a settled fact, has since been debunked. Yet millions are still prescribed psychiatric medications based on this outdated model. Many of them are children. And very few are given real informed consent, about side effects, long-term risks or the deeper roots of their distress.
When I was first medicated, the cocktail I was given hadn’t even been tested on teens. The long-term effects were unknown, but prescriptions were handed out anyway.
For some, a diagnosis can be a relief—a name for their suffering, and a hope for relief in pill form. But those pills, in many cases, have never been studied over the long term for safety or efficacy. And once a person internalizes a diagnosis, it can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than treating emotions as understandable responses to life circumstances, we begin to view sadness, fear or anger as evidence of disorder. We turn normal reactions into pathology. We turn people into patients.
In the Jewish tradition, we are taught that every human being is created b’tzelem Elokim—in the image of the Divine. Our sages, like Rambam (Maimonides), taught that healing is not just medical. It is emotional, spiritual and physical. Today, we must reclaim that wisdom.
The current mental-health system is failing us. It is managing symptoms while ignoring root causes. It is over-pathologizing pain, while under-delivering on healing.
As a mother, educator and mental-health advocate living in a country in distress, I believe we cannot afford to keep parroting half-truths. We need a complete rethinking of how we understand and approach mental health.
That begins with dismantling harmful narratives like “one in five,” promoting whole-person healing, grounded in biology, community and meaning, refusing to label normal reactions to abnormal circumstances as “disorders,” and encouraging people to ask better questions, seek second opinions and partner with practitioners who see them as whole.
Let’s go beyond hashtags and campaigns. Let’s talk about light exposure, nature, sleep, connection and purpose. Let’s start supporting each other, not with diagnoses but with dignity.
Because mental health doesn’t affect one in five. It affects five in five.
And if we’re going to heal—as individuals, a people and a nation—we must start by telling the truth.
