Key points

Mental health care is the poor country cousin in U.S. health care.

Medicine’s isolated focus on physical disases excludes mental illnesses.

Medical education perpetuates this splitting of the mind from the body.

The National Academy of Medicine provides a template for how we can change.

The National Academy of Medicine’s (NAM) 2025 Vital Directions for Health and Health Care explores radical change, 1 especially what we must do at the political level, 2 that has powerful implications for mental health and medical education in mental disorders.

Formerly the Institute of Medicine, the NAM is an independent, nonprofit organization that provides nonpartisan, evidence-based leadership to advance science, inform policy, and catalyze action to achieve optimal health for a

See Full Page