National Children's Mental Health Awareness

National Children's Mental Health Awareness Week is the National Federation's yearly event, geared toward raising awareness to the issues and causes integral to the children's mental health field in each of the communities across the country. This event takes place on the first full week in May. As national events continue to illuminate the critical need for mental health care reform in this country, we must increase our efforts to educate the nation about the importance of prevention and early identification of mental health challenges. As a nation, we are vigilant about ensuring that our citizens know basic first aid techniques, understand the importance of smoke detectors, and can recite the techniques of ?stop, drop and roll? but we fail to educate ourselves about the signs and symptoms of mental illness.