Blog

It’s Mental Health Awareness Month in the U.S., focusing on improving the understanding of mental health issues and reducing the stigma. We believe this conversation is a needed and fundamentally important one. That is why prioritizing the mental health of each and every member of our team is essential.

National Mental Health Month provides an opportunity to bring awareness to the limits of access to mental healthcare, the growing number of people experiencing symptoms, and the importance of advocacy. May is also a time to focus on understanding our own personal mental health. It is estimated that as few as half of those who experience a mental illness receive treatment.

Many patients that have relied on telemedicine have found that working with a physician virtually delivers the same care and compassion they would have with an in-person visit. For those struggling with mental health issues specifically, telepsychiatry provides more access to those who need treatment for anxiety, trauma, grief, depression, and more.

Mental health and its treatment have a long and complicated history. Mental illness has been in existence since the beginning of humankind, and individuals with mental health struggles have been, and always will be, part of our story. It is reported that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Dickens suffered from depression, Ludwig von Beethoven and Winston Churchill carried the struggle of bipolar disorder, and Isaac Newton and Vaslav Nijinsky lived with schizophrenia.

At VirtualMed Staff, our mission statement is to see more patients. But we have never intended it to suggest we ask our clinicians to hurry. On the contrary, we don’t want them to hurry at all. We encourage our clinicians to take the time needed to treat every patient properly.