The Mental Health System Isn't Broken. It Was Never Built for You.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and I want to say something the awareness campaigns usually don't.
The mental health system isn't broken. A broken system is one that was built to work and failed. What we have instead is a system built for a specific kind of person — insured, urban, employed, with $200 and a flexible schedule — that has worked fine for them.
Everyone else has been left to manage.
The numbers are not subtle. One in five adults in the United States experiences a mental health condition. Fewer than half will access treatment. The communities with the highest rates of trauma — Black and Indigenous women, low-income women, survivors of domestic violence, veterans, people in rural areas — face the longest waits, the fewest providers, and the least culturally competent care.
This is not coincidence. It is a policy, made repeatedly, by people for whom the current system is adequate.
What makes this harder to name is that the wellness industry has colonized the conversation. A $4.5 trillion industry built itself in the gap between what people need and what the system provides — and it did something very useful for its bottom line: it moved the problem from structural to personal. Your mental health is a practice. A project. Something you can fix with the right tools, if you're trying hard enough.
That framing does two things. It sells products. And it makes the political choice invisible.
The political choice is that the United States does not fund mental health care as a right. That is a decision. It is reversible. It is the thing worth naming.
She Creates Love makes objects. Mugs and pillows and tees with honest language on them. We're not pretending that's mental health care. What we are saying is that the language matters — that 'your body is not a machine' and 'rest is a right' and 'you are not broken for feeling this' are political positions, not just affirmations, and that surrounding yourself with them is not the same as buying a $12 app subscription that tells you to breathe.
If you need support this month:
Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988
Open Path Collective (low-cost therapy, $30–80): openpathcollective.org
NAMI Helpline: 1-800-950-6264
