Mental Health Awareness Month—Leading the Way
Dr. Joe Oravecz • May 1, 2024

Your Challenge...

Should You Choose to Accept it...

I'm keeping this intentionally short. 


May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to shine a spotlight on the importance of mental health in all aspects of life—especially in the workplace.


This is the challenge - DON'T BE PERFORMATIVE


Leaders have a unique responsibility to lead by example, showing that prioritizing mental health is not a weakness but a strength.


This month, I challenge leaders to go beyond performative gestures like token wellness programs or emails about "self-care."


True leadership means creating policies, practices, and a culture that genuinely supports mental well-being. It means having honest conversations, offering flexibility, and ensuring access to resources.


What actions will you take this month to champion mental health in your organization?




By Dr. Joe Oravecz September 1, 2025
As August fades and September dawns, we find ourselves in that rare in-between - the denouement of summer and the on-ramp to fall. The air still carries warmth, but there’s an undercurrent of change. The days shorten, shadows lengthen, and the rhythm of nature shifts quietly beneath our feet. This is not yet the bold arrival of fall, nor the lingering fullness of summer - it is something more subtle, more liminal. And isn’t that exactly how mental health - and leadership - often works? True change rarely arrives in one dramatic moment. It happens in transition. In the slow turning of seasons.  In the quiet noticing that things aren’t quite what they were, but not yet what they will be. For me, these last several months have carried that same spirit. Unexpected pauses. Redirections. New opportunities slowly forming out of old foundations. Coaching with executives who want to lead without losing themselves. Consulting with institutions navigating transitions. Speaking about mental health not as an “extra,” but as the foundation of culture and performance. And most recently, listening deeply to families who are navigating the hidden complexities of higher education. Like the shift from summer to fall, these moments don’t arrive with fanfare - but with a quiet insistence that things are changing. And that change, if we pay attention, is not something to fear. I t’s something to embrace. September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month - and it’s worth remembering that awareness, like the seasons, is about rhythm and presence. It’s about pausing long enough to notice the small shifts in ourselves and in others. Asking the question. Reaching out. Choosing to walk alongside. As leaders, as colleagues, as friends, our work is not to demand immediate transformation. It is to honor the transitions. To model that well-being isn’t a side project, it’s the soil in which everything else grows. Summer may be ending, but what follows isn’t loss - it’s the layering of what’s next. The colors, the clarity, the perspective that only comes when seasons turn. So I’ll leave you with this question: What transition is quietly asking for your attention right now? Because in honoring it, you may just find the foundation for what’s to come.
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