Key points

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in depression and anxiety.

One in five American adults experience mental illness each year.

We need hope to manage this challenge.

Recent years have seen a dramatic rise in depression and anxiety in the United States (Terlizzi and Zablotsky, 2024). According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in five American adults experiences mental illness each year (NAMI, 2025), and a Harvard Medical School international study projected that half of the world’s population will experience a mental health disorder in their lifetime (2023).

To deal with this mental health challenge, we need hope, something that psychologist C. R. Snyder (1994) described as a process of goals, pathways, and agency—a positive goal we can believe in,

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