That framing stayed with me as Mental Health Awareness Month arrived once again.

We are living through a mental health crisis that cannot be resolved through awareness alone. Nearly one in five U.S. adults experiences mental illness each year. Young people report record levels of persistent sadness and hopelessness. And yet access to timely, affordable support has not kept pace with demand.

Part of what makes this crisis so difficult is that mental health challenges rarely exist in isolation. They are woven into the fabric of daily life — shaped by housing instability, financial stress, loneliness, food insecurity, and the sheer difficulty of navigating complex care systems. Social conditions are not peripheral to behavioral health. For many Americans, they are central drivers of it.

This is where Futuro Health Scholars like Tasha C. and Jose C. come in. Tasha survived triple negative breast cancer a decade ago, and through that experience navigating treatment, she found her calling — sharing resources with others in her community. She later learned there was a name for what she was already doing: Community Health Worker. Jose grew up navigating the justice system firsthand. Today he works at Horizon Treatment Services as a Peer Support Specialist, trained through Futuro Health, helping others enter recovery. “I want to be that hope for people now,” he says.

What Tasha C. and Jose C . bring that no system alone can replicate is exactly what Dr. Rabin’s neuroscience describes: the ability to look a fellow community member in the eye and begin a relationship of trust. They’ve lived versions of the journeys their clients are on. That shared experience lowers the walls, signals safety, and creates the conditions from which authentic care and real change can originate.

This Mental Health Awareness Month, I find myself thinking about people like Tasha C. and Jose C., who decided that their hardest life chapters were exactly the preparation they needed to help others. Clinical care saves lives. But trust is often what gets someone through the door in the first place. Investing in the workforce that builds that trust isn’t supplemental to healthcare. It’s foundational to it.

View videos of Futuro Health Scholars Tasha C. and Jose C. here.