When we talk about mental health care, the conversation often begins when someone is already struggling.
They’re often overwhelmed and experiencing severe anxiety or depression. Their relationships might even be suffering. Sometimes, they’ve reached a point where they simply don’t know what to do next.
What might happen if we began having the conversation sooner?
For Heather Lewis, MD, MPH, MS, known throughout her community as “Doc Heather,” preventive measures are an important part of how we can rethink mental wellness.
A primary care physician, military veteran, and member of Santé’s Board of Directors, Doc Heather has built much of her career around preventive medicine and looking at health through a whole-person lens.
This is why she believes prevention belongs in our conversations about mental health, too.
“Let’s not wait until it’s that bad.”
Mental Health Is Part of Whole-Person Health
Doc Heather’s perspective on prevention was shaped partially by her medical training, but also by her experience serving around the world as an active-duty military member.
Those experiences reinforced a simple but powerful message: our health doesn’t exist in isolation.
Our physical health matters just as much as our mental and emotional health. So do our relationships, nutrition, homes, and even our workplaces. We must stop discounting the environments we move through every day as part of our overall health and well-being.
“We are actually social beings,” Doc Heather explained, emphasizing that healthy social connections can support both mental and physical well-being.
That’s why prevention isn’t always about a screening, doctor’s appointment, or treatment plan.
Sometimes, it’s recognizing that you’ve been keeping yourself in environments that may actually be detrimental to your overall well-being and then removing yourself from them.
The Power of Connection
The importance of human connection is one reason Doc Heather was particularly drawn to Santé’s Wellness Centers.
After attending the opening of Santé’s Germantown Wellness Center, she saw firsthand how these spaces can provide ample opportunities to connect.
Santé’s Wellness Centers offer peer support, activities, resources, and spaces where people can connect with others or simply find a quiet place to decompress.
Peer support can be particularly powerful because it reminds people that their experiences aren’t theirs alone.
As Doc Heather explained:
“How powerful is it to acknowledge that what you’re going through, you’re not alone?”
Someone who has experienced similar challenges can offer something uniquely valuable to others: the reassurance that another person understands what they’re going through.
That validation can also offer hope.
“If this person has felt it too,” Doc Heather explained, someone may begin to believe, “maybe there’s hope for me to get through it.”
You Don’t Have to Be “Bad Enough”
One of the biggest barriers to seeking mental health support can be the belief that someone else needs it more.
Maybe you’re struggling, but you’re still getting out of bed.
You’re still going to work and caring for your family.
You’re managing. You tell yourself, “It isn’t that bad.”
Doc Heather wants people to stop using the severity of someone else’s struggles to determine whether their own are worthy of support.
“Don’t discount yourself. Don’t disqualify yourself.”
If something is troubling you, it matters.
Here at Santé, we want to remind you that you don’t have to wait until you’re experiencing a mental health crisis before you reach out. In fact, getting connected with resources, supportive people, or professional care earlier may help keep challenges from escalating.
“Getting you resources, getting you connected, just honestly getting you heard when you start to feel trouble…if we can prevent it getting to a crisis point, that’s a win-win,” Doc Heather said. “Even as myself, as a primary care physician, I need my own therapist. Therapists need their own therapist.”
We all need another person in our corner.
Our Environments Matter, Too
Prevention also means looking beyond what’s happening inside a person and asking what’s happening around them.
Is home a place where they feel safe?
Do they have healthy relationships?
What is happening at work or school?
Are they experiencing isolation?
Have they been exposed to physical, verbal, or other forms of violence?
Doc Heather emphasizes that our environments can play an important role in our overall well-being.
For young people especially, recognizing an unhealthy environment can be complicated. If certain behaviors have always been part of someone’s home life, they may not immediately recognize them as harmful.
Those experiences can influence how people learn to respond to stress, conflict, and fear.
This is one reason Doc Heather is also passionate about crisis intervention training and ensuring people responding to behavioral health emergencies understand that a person’s behavior may be communicating something deeper.
Someone appearing angry, threatening, or highly distressed may be experiencing fear, trauma, emotional overwhelm, or a mental health crisis.
Understanding what may be happening beneath the behavior creates an opportunity for a different response; one centered on safety, de-escalation, and compassion.
Asking for Help Is an Act of Self-Advocacy
For Doc Heather, reaching out before things reach a breaking point isn’t weakness.
It’s courage.
It means recognizing what you need and advocating for yourself.
Asking for help might look like:
- Talking with a therapist.
- Finding peer support.
- Telling a trusted friend that you’re struggling.
- Visiting a Wellness Center.
- Reaching out to Santé and allowing someone to help you determine what kind of support might be right for you.
The important thing is not convincing yourself that you have to handle everything alone.
As Doc Heather put it:
“If you are hurting, if you are in pain, please reach out and ask for help. It’s okay.”
Meet Yourself Where You Are
Santé’s mission is rooted in meeting people where they are.
That includes people experiencing an immediate behavioral health crisis, but it also includes the person who simply knows something doesn’t feel right.
You don’t have to wait until you’re at your lowest point, and you don’t have to know exactly what kind of help you need before reaching out.
Sometimes, prevention begins by simply saying, I’m struggling, and I could use some support.
From there, connection can begin.
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