We Have Two Mental Health Crises—and Each Could Help Solve the Other

We keep talking about two enormous problems as though they have nothing to do with each other.

The first is a shortage of people available to help.

137 million Americans—about 40% of the U.S. population—live in a federally designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Area.

The United States is projected to be short nearly 100,000 mental health counselors by 2038, leaving the workforce able to meet only about 55% of projected demand under HRSA’s status-quo scenario.

HRSA, State of the Behavioral Health Workforce, 2025

The second is a crisis of disconnection.

Approximately half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness, with some of the highest rates occurring among young adults.

Adults who frequently feel lonely have more than twice the odds of developing depression compared with adults who rarely or never feel lonely.

Across nearly 100 studies involving more than 66,000 people, a stronger sense of purpose was consistently associated with lower levels of depression and anxiety.

U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on loneliness and social connection. 2023 meta-analysis indexed by the National Library of Medicine

We tend to approach the first crisis as a workforce problem and the second as a mental health problem.

But what if they are two sides of the same problem?

What if part of the solution to our shortage of helpers is giving more people the tools and opportunities to help—and what if helping becomes part of how some of those people rediscover purpose, confidence, belonging, and hope?

There is no shortage of compassion. There is a shortage of pathways that help people turn compassion into useful, supported action.

The Person Who Needs Support May Also Have Support to Give

Our mental health system often places people into fixed categories.

There are providers and patients. Experts and recipients. Helpers and people who need help.

Real life is simply not that neat.

Needing help does not erase our capacity to be helpful.

In fact, the opportunity to contribute can sometimes restore something that receiving support alone cannot. It can create reciprocity instead of dependency, identity beyond diagnosis, and lived evidence that a person still has value to offer.

This does not mean people should be pushed into caregiving when they are depleted or made responsible for needs beyond their capacity. It means our support systems should leave room for people to move naturally between receiving and contributing.

Everyone needs help sometimes. Almost everyone has the potential to help in some way.

Purpose Is Not an Optional Extra

Mental health support often focuses on reducing distress: fewer symptoms, fewer crises, fewer painful thoughts, fewer days when functioning feels impossible.

Those outcomes matter. But the absence of distress is not the same as the presence of a meaningful life.

People also need connection, agency, contribution, growth, and a sense that they matter. They need places where they are not viewed only through the lens of what is wrong or what they need.

Helping another person can create those experiences.

There Is No Shortage of Compassion

Across communities, millions of people already want to help.

But, they may assume that without a degree or certification, they have nothing meaningful to offer.

We can change that.

We can teach basic helping skills, emotional regulation, communication, boundaries, trauma awareness, and when to connect someone with professional care. We can also equip nonclinical helpers to deliver evidence-based approaches such as CBT and DBT—a model already being used by NGOs to expand mental health support in low- and middle-income countries. We can create communities where people practice those skills and learn from one another. We can give individuals opportunities to move from receiving support to offering it—and back again when life changes.

This does not dilute professional care. It builds a healthier human environment around it.

There is no shortage of compassion. There is a shortage of pathways that help people turn compassion into useful, supported action.

The Problem May Be Part of the Solution

We have too few people equipped to help and too many people who feel disconnected from purpose, belonging, and one another.

But we should recognize the possibility sitting between them.

When people receive practical tools to strengthen themselves and support others, we expand the circle of capable help. When they are given meaningful opportunities to contribute, we also create pathways toward confidence, connection, identity, and purpose.

Because there may be a shortage of professionals, time, funding, and accessible services.

But there is no shortage of compassion.