Mental Health Awareness Month

A model of a human brain decorated with colorful flowers and a green awareness ribbon on top, set against a green background.

Mental Health Awareness

Across the United States and Canada, Mental Health Awareness Month (U.S.) and Mental Health Week (Canada) reflect parallel efforts to advance mental health as a public and community priority.

While distinct in structure, both advocacy campaigns emphasize the same core goals: expanding understanding, reducing stigma, and improving access to care.

For Adler University, this alignment reflects how the work itself happens — across communities, disciplines, and borders, where local engagement contributes to broader, shared progress.

strengthening systems of care

A person with long dark hair and glasses selects a blue book from a shelf filled with various academic texts in a library, giving opportunities for new learning and discovery.

Alumni authors: Stories that inform, inspire, and empower

Across genres and audiences, Adler University alumni are publishing titles that move beyond personal narrative or professional instruction, engaging urgent questions about how people heal, relate, and lead. The authors featured here bring that perspective into distinct contexts, offering a view into how Adler’s approach to education translates into practice, and how those ideas take shape in the lives and systems they are designed to serve.

‘May Contain Anxiety’: How an Adler alum fills a critical gap for food allergy families

When Tamara Hubbard’s three-year-old son was diagnosed with a peanut allergy, she found plenty of medical guidance, but nothing to help her family cope with the anxiety. The answers she needed didn’t exist. So, Hubbard created them.

A person wearing roller skates helps another person up from the ground on an outdoor sports court, capturing the spirit of starting a hobby and supporting each other through beginnerhood.

Why starting a hobby as an adult can feel so hard — and why you should embrace beginnerhood

Many adults struggle to carve out space for hobbies because of lack of time, money and resources. Unlike childhood, adulthood comes with time pressures and responsibilities.

From president coleman

Mental Health Awareness Month underscores the need for approaches that extend beyond awareness alone.

In this message, Lisa Coleman, Ph.D., reflects on the role of higher education in addressing the global mental health crisis and the importance of aligning education, research, and practice to strengthen systems of care.

Her perspective emphasizes leadership that is grounded in partnership and responsive to the needs of the communities it serves.

alumni authors

Adler University alumni contribute to the mental health field through scholarship, clinical insight, and public engagement.

Their work spans clinical practice, community-based care, and systems-level change, bringing Adlerian perspectives into conversations about access, equity, and well-being across diverse settings.

Collectively, these contributions reflect a commitment to translating knowledge into practice and extending the reach of mental health support in meaningful, applied ways.

MEET ADLER'S ALUMNI AUTHORS

Woman sits in chair with her arm bent, leaning her chin on her wrist.

“I’m a systems thinker by nature… even when I’m working individually with people, I want to understand their systems.”

That systems-based perspective, developed through Adler’s Couple and Family Therapy program, became foundational to Tamara Hubbard’s work. By addressing the broader family and social dynamics of food allergies, she is helping reshape how mental health is integrated into care.

Read her story

“I’m a systems thinker by nature… even when I’m working individually with people, I want to understand their systems.”

Read her story

“I appreciated how deeply Alfred Adler valued, not only healing the individual, but strengthening the community as a whole…”

In classrooms and counseling spaces, Claire Porter, MA ’10, saw how often children lacked the language to express their feelings. Drawing on her Adlerian training, she began developing tools that use art and storytelling to help children make sense of complex emotions

Read her story

“I appreciated how deeply Alfred Adler valued, not only healing the individual, but strengthening the community as a whole…”

Read her story

A woman with long blonde hair, wearing glasses, a tan sweater, and white top, stands smiling against a plain white background—supporting efforts to break stigma and address unspoken truths around sensitive topics.

“One of my professors worked at the BC Society for Survivors of Male Sexual Abuse and it just clicked as a group that I could help.”

That early recognition of an underserved population, deepened through Adler’s program, shaped the direction of Kelli Palfy’s career.
Through her work and writing, she is helping bring visibility to experiences that have long remained unspoken, opening pathways to healing for male survivors.

READ HER STORY

“One of my professors worked at the BC Society for Survivors of Male Sexual Abuse and it just clicked as a group that I could help.”

READ HER STORY

how one Adler alum is advancing a more holistic approach to athlete development

“Often times people watch a sporting event and only think about the game and maybe the physical training these athletes go through. But there’s so much more work that goes behind the scenes, especially above the shoulders.” – Felix Yu, MA’18

May 1, 2026

Alumni authors: Stories that inform, inspire, and empower

April 30, 2026

‘May Contain Anxiety’: How an Adler alum fills a critical gap for food allergy families

April 7, 2026

Why starting a hobby as an adult can feel so hard — and why you should embrace beginnerhood

A group of people stand in a circle and stack their hands together in the center, showing teamwork and unity—the price of belonging embraced by all.

December 11, 2025

To help young athletes perform their best, Adler alum strengthens their mental health

May 1, 2025

How the Adler community stays grounded: Self-care rituals for Mental Health Awareness Month

Two people sit on a rooftop ledge in casual clothes, smiling at each other under a clear sky with city buildings behind them, capturing a moment of authentic relationships.

February 13, 2025

The love we seek: How to build authentic and healthy relationships

December 9, 2024

Adler alum keeps the mental health conversation going

A busy city street with blurred pedestrians crossing at an intersection between tall buildings in daylight.

November 14, 2024

Addressing an overlooked need: Mental health support for Chicago’s migrant community

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