The symbol

What a green ribbon means

A green awareness ribbon most often stands for mental health. It is the symbol of Mental Health Awareness Month each May. Green is also used by a long list of other causes, which is the part most explanations leave out.

The short answer

Mental health, first

If someone is wearing a green ribbon in May, or alongside anything about therapy, stigma, depression or suicide prevention, it is about mental health. That is the most common meaning and the one you can assume without asking.

The color choice has a specific history. In the 1800s green was the color used to brand people labeled insane. The children's mental health community took the same color and turned it around, so that green now stands for new growth and new beginnings. The National Federation of Families launched the Green Ribbon Campaign in 2007 on that basis, and it is where the green ribbon as a formal awareness symbol comes from.

Nobody owns it. There is no license to apply for, no organization to credit, and no registered shade. You can print one, wear one, or put one on a poster without asking anyone. Our color values page has the hex codes and downloadable palette files, and the media library has the ribbon graphics.

The complication

Green is used by a lot of causes

Awareness ribbon colors are not registered with anyone, so the same color gets adopted independently by unrelated groups. Green is one of the most heavily shared.

Health and medicine

Cerebral palsy, kidney disease and kidney cancer, organ and tissue donation, mitochondrial disease, glaucoma and eye injury prevention, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, Tourette syndrome, gastroparesis, and bipolar disorder and depression as conditions in their own right.

Outside health

Missing children, worker and pedestrian safety, and support for farm families, which the National Catholic Rural Life Conference launched in 1998. Green ribbons have also been worn as political symbols, from 17th century England through to protests in Iran in 2009 and Russia in 2022.

Context settles it in practice. The month, the organization handing them out, or the words next to the ribbon will tell you which cause is meant.

Shades

Lime green is a separate thing, sometimes

Lime green ribbons are used for mental health too, particularly for children's mental health, because the Green Ribbon Campaign uses the lighter shade. So a lime ribbon in May is very likely still about mental health.

Lime is also the color used for Lyme disease and for lymphoma, both of which run their own campaigns. Lyme disease awareness month is also May, so the two genuinely overlap on the calendar and the ribbon alone will not tell you which is meant.

If you are making something and want to avoid the ambiguity, use the darker green and put words on it. Both shades are on the color page, with hex, RGB, HSL and CMYK values.

Get one

Using a green ribbon yourself

Everything here is free, original work with no organization's branding on it, which is what makes it safe to use without permission.

Digital

Vector and transparent PNG ribbons for posts, headers, email signatures and websites are in the media library.

Print and craft

The same vectors cut on a Cricut or Silhouette, embroider, and print. Posters and flyers are in print assets.

Physical ribbon

A length of green ribbon folded into a loop and pinned is the original version, and it costs almost nothing. No supplier is official.

Also called this

Two things that share the name

"The Green Ribbon" is also a short horror story, the one about the woman who never takes the ribbon off her neck, which many people read in school. It has nothing to do with awareness ribbons.

Green Ribbon Schools is a US Department of Education recognition award for schools on sustainability, which is also unrelated.