Jason Draizin Thinks Mental Health Awareness Month Should Be About More Than Talking

Mental Health Awareness Month has never had a shortage of slogans. Talk about it. Check on your friends. End the stigma. All good advice.

Jason Draizin is more interested in what happens after someone actually starts getting help.

Just weeks before Mental Health Awareness Month kicked off in May, Draizin and clinical forensic psychologist Dr. John Huber released The Definitive Ketamine Mental Healthcare Workbook, a 99-page companion guide for people undergoing ketamine-assisted therapy.

"Awareness is the first step. Treatment is the second. The third is everything that happens in the hundreds of hours between appointments, and that's where most people fall off," Draizin said. "This workbook gives patients journaling prompts, CBT exercises, and assessments they can use day to day, so the progress they make in a session doesn't disappear by the next one."

The workbook arrives during a moment when mental health conversations are becoming harder to avoid. According to NAMI, more than 1 in 5 U.S. adults experienced mental illness in 2024, while Mental Health America’s theme for this year’s Mental Health Awareness Month is “More Good Days, Together.”

For Draizin, the goal was to build something practical instead of inspirational.

“Dr. Huber has spent more than 30 years working directly with patients, so he’s seen what happens when somebody tries medication after medication and still feels stuck,” Draizin said. “My background was always more focused on helping people find access in the first place. The workbook ended up becoming the middle ground between those two worlds — something grounded in real clinical experience, but written in a way that actually feels usable in everyday life.”

The Definitive Ketamine Mental Healthcare Workbook is available now in paperback and hardcover on Amazon. Mental Health Awareness Month ends May 31. The work it's centered around doesn't.