National Recovery Month: The Importance of Health and Well-Being in Recovery

Week One: We can strive to be healthier and achieve our wellness goals.

September 1 – 7 is Week One of National Recovery Month 2024. During this week, we highlight aspects of well-being and their importance to support people with mental health and substance use conditions in their journey to recovery. Wellness includes making healthy choices that support our well-being. Finding balance among the different aspects of well-being is especially important for people in recovery.

We all can make choices that support our health and well-being, such as eating a nutritious diet, exercising regularly, developing healthy sleeping habits, and managing other health issues. Getting preventive medical, dental, and vision care is also important to staying healthy.

Recovery is real and, with the right choices and support, we can achieve wellness. But you do not need to do it alone. It is OK to reach out for help if you or someone you know needs help with mental health or substance use conditions.

How You Can Help

• Support the health and well-being of those seeking help or in their recovery journey by spreading awareness about SAMHSA resources. For example, this year’s National Recovery Month toolkit includes English and Spanish social media messages, shareable graphics, and other recovery information that you can promote on your platforms. You can also use the weekly themes to develop messages that resonate with your audiences. Do not forget to check out the toolkit's weekly bilingual social media posts
• Download a National Recovery Month virtual background and use it during your online meetings in September to create awareness and show your support.
• Update your social media profiles with our National Recovery Month profile frames (English and Spanish) to show your support.

• August 31 – International Overdose Awareness Day
• September 5 – SAMHSA's 2nd Annual Walk for Reovery from Freedom Plaza to the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. If you’re interested in attending, please contact Michael Askew.
• September 10 – World Suicide Prevention Day
• September 8-14 – National Suicide Prevention Week
• September 20 – National Addiction Professionals Day
• September 30 – International Recovery Day

Learn More About National Recovery Month

Can AI help ease medicine’s empathy problem?

Despite the proliferation of communication training programs over the past decade or two, doctors often fail to express empathy, especially in stressful moments when patients and their families are struggling to hear bad news and make difficult decisions. Since empathy has been shown to enhance what patients understand and how much they trust their medical team, falling short compromises the quality of patient care. One reason for the growing interest in AI to help solve medicine’s empathy problem is that this aspect of medical care has proven particularly hard to improve. This isn’t surprising, given that physicians face ever-increasing pressures to quickly see large numbers of patients while finding themselves drowning in paperwork and a myriad of administrative duties. These taxing conditions lead to both a lack of time and, perhaps more importantly, a lack of emotional energy. An American Medical Association report indicated that 48% of doctors experienced burnout last year. Given the magnitude of the empathy problem and its significant clinical and ethical stakes, various possible uses of AI are being explored. None of them are likely to be silver bullets and, while each is well-intentioned, the entire endeavor is fraught with risks.

Less Than 5% of People With a Substance Use Disorder Get Treatment

A new federal report found that 48.5 million Americans aged 12 and up had a substance use disorder (SUD) in 2023. Only 4.5% of this group received treatment for their condition.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) identified this discrepancy in its newly released 2023 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

A lack of understanding about the importance of SUD treatment may contribute to the number of people who do not receive SUD treatment, and adults who felt they needed treatment but did not seek it offered three main reasons for their choice. Almost three-quarters felt they should be able to handle their alcohol or drug use on their own, 65% believed they were not ready to start treatment and 60% felt they were not ready to stop or cut back on their alcohol or drug consumption.

Hundreds of Thousands of Parents Died From Drugs. Their Kids Need More Help, Advocates Say

More than 321,000 children in the U.S. lost a parent to a drug overdose in the decade between 2011 and 2021, according to a study by federal health researchers that was published in JAMA Psychiatry in May.

Children need help to get through their immediate grief, but they also need longer-term support, said Chad Shearer, senior vice president for policy at the United Hospital Fund of New York and former deputy director at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s State Health Reform Assistance Network. Counties with higher overdose death rates were more likely to have children with grandparents as the primary caregiver, according to a 2023 study from East Tennessee State University. This was particularly true for counties across states in the Appalachian region. Tennessee has the third-highest drug overdose death rate in the nation, following the District of Columbia and West Virginia. In recent years, opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers have paid states billions of dollars to settle lawsuits accusing them of contributing to the overdose epidemic. Some experts and advocates want states to use some of that money to help these children cope with the loss of their parents. Others want more support for caregivers, and special mental health programs to help the kids work through their long-term trauma — and to break a pattern of addiction that often cycles through generations.