“We reaffirm that we are committed to the mental health and well-being of all individuals, that we are committed to healing and recovery for all those who seek it, and we are committed to inclusion and equity for all people. All those we serve, and all of us,” – incoming MHA president and CEO.
(6-15-21) Schroeder Stribling has been named President and CEO of Mental Health America, the nation’s oldest advocacy group for individuals living with mental illnesses. She replaces Paul Gionfriddo, the parent of an adult son with a mental illness, who has run the organization since 2014.
According to a press release, when she was introduced last Friday at an annual MHA conference, she said her experiences as a gay woman helped form the basis of her commitment to social justice issues.
“While my primary experience as a gay person has been one of acceptance and inclusion, this wasn’t the case for my biological father who himself was gay and who grew up in a very different time and place…his personal journey was difficult, he struggled mightily with depression and substance abuse.
“In my late teens and early twenties, I cared for him—as best I could at the time—while he was dying of AIDS…As you might expect, the experience was also traumatic for me—it overwhelmed my 20-year-old capacity to absorb the impact and led to anxiety and depression of my own. It took me many years afterwards to find the help and healing I needed to unwind the long tentacles of trauma. Three decades later now, my lived experience and that of my father, is the basis of my personal case for hope and my commitment to social justice.”
Mental Health America was founded in 1909 by Clifford W. Beers, who launched the group after being abused in both private and public mental hospitals. Historically, it has been the voice of individuals living with mental illnesses, although the larger National Alliance on Mental Illness, which was started in 1979 by parents, has recently expanded its membership to draw from that same base. A marked difference between the two groups is that MHA has traditionally opposed Assisted Outpatient Treatment while NAMI has endorsed its use as a last resort.
Fight Against Stigma
The 54-year-old Stribling comes to MHA after 18 years at N Street Village, a nonprofit providing housing support services for women and families in Washington, DC.
According to an MHA press release: “She was most recently the organization’s Chief Executive Officer. Under her leadership, N Street Village expanded from one to eight locations. She helped diversify revenue streams, create partnerships with government entities, lead city-wide policy initiatives on homelessness, and acquire a smaller nonprofit organization. Prior to her time at N Street Village, Stribling was a Senior Social Worker at Johns Hopkins Bayview Hospital, where she was responsible for the implementation of new mental health programs in the inner-city Head Start school system.”
In her remarks Friday, she said, “I see MHA as poised to lead the nation in understanding that individual mental health and well-being are fundamental to all the crucial social and public health issues of our day…We are poised to accelerate our progress in our fight against stigma in a time when public awareness of mental health is unusually high…So we are poised to accelerate American progress on openness and inclusion…And we are also poised to accelerate our advocacy for racial justice and equity in this American moment.”
Gionfriddo is credited with getting MHA on a more secure financial footing during his leadership. It listed net assets of nearly $6 million in 2019, according to tax records. Under his leadership, MHA also launched B4Stage4, described as:
“A philosophy – that mental health conditions should be treated long before they reach the most critical points in the disease process. When we think about diseases like cancer or heart disease, we don’t wait years to treat them. We start before Stage 4—we begin with prevention, identify symptoms, and develop a plan of action to stop and hopefully reverse the progression of the disease.”
Here’s Stribling’s speech as the incoming MHA chief.
I am so delighted to be here with all of you tonight, you have extended such a warm, welcoming hand to me and I have been so greatly impressed with all of the extraordinary work that you are doing, so, in sum, I already like you a lot, and, I can’t even pretend to be cool about that, so I won’t.
In truth, I am thrilled to be joining this extended MHA family and I am especially honored and humbled to be receiving the relay baton from Paul Gionfriddo. To that end, I want to start with a few gratitudes, and Paul, I’m starting with you. I understand why you have been MHA’s beloved and inspirational leader. I understand, because the first time I met you I thought: “That is a person I would follow.” Which now turns out to be literally true. But, at the time, really it was born of the sentiment that I knew your leadership was wise, and thoughtful, and important.
You have set MHA already on an ambitious path, you have nurtured and cultivated a talented staff, you have set the organization on a firm foundation with innovative programs, creative partnerships, and a solid financial standing. And a P.S. that I thank you for sharing, this, your last conference week with me. I, too, came here both to honor and to celebrate your time with MHA.
And a gratitude to the affiliates and partners and to all of you who are here at the conference—I have been very moved by what a thoughtful and committed group of national leaders you are. I have met folks from across the country, learned about the effective and imaginative work you are doing to meet the needs of your communities. You are inspiring.
And a gratitude to the Board—you are an impressive and well-organized collective. To a person, you have been generous in your kindness in welcoming me and I look forward to working closely with you as we go into MHA’s next chapter.
And last, but hardly least, to the staff: you are no doubt the cherry on top of this experience for me. Though I am still getting to know you—you had me at hello, even on Zoom. I have enjoyed the time that I’ve spent with you and I am very excited to work alongside you. And by the way, go Air Nomads, just saying.
As Debbie Plotnick said to me on Wednesday just minutes after we met, “Here, we lead with our whole hearts.” I can tell from my experience even just at this conference how clearly true that is of all of you. So, I wanted to use this opportunity to introduce myself to you on a personal level and to tie that to my attraction to the mission of MHA.
As Peter mentioned, I am coming to you from an 18-year career at a community-based organization right here in Washington, DC—N Street Village, if you haven’t visited, you are most welcome to visit. N Street Village provides shelter, permanent housing, and wrap-around services for women who are experiencing homelessness here in the District. Of the thousands we serve each year, all have their own, generally very difficult, health stories—and mental health figures prominently. For the women of our Village, trauma in its many forms is common—from the simple fact of the traumatic experience of becoming homeless, to partner violence, to racialized trauma, and more—this is a consistent theme in our community and many whom we serve also cope with other significant mental health conditions, including psychosis. These are all factors that we know make people more vulnerable to homelessness in general, and then, more vulnerable even because of it. Our first commitment at The Village was to facilitate moving as many women as possible from shelter into housing, because we know that housing is health care, including mental health care.
So I know first-hand how important local organizations are to the delivery of dignified and inclusive services for those with serious mental health conditions, and also to prevention, early intervention, and the creation of recovery-oriented communities and people.
Years ago, I won’t mention how many, I was attracted to the field of social work because I was committed to individual healing and recovery, and because I was compelled by a profession guided by a moral compass focused both on individual and collective well-being.
We’ve come a long way since then, and we have advanced our understanding of social justice in many important ways. I am witnessing this advancement right here at the conference in learning about the important work you all are doing—tackling issues of racial justice, equity, and inclusion in new and bolder ways. And to me, there could be no more consequential time in which to be doing so.
This American moment—as painful as it is and has been—also provides us with an opportunity. An opportunity to reaffirm and advance our longstanding commitments and to walk into new territory of our social justice ambitions.
We reaffirm that we are committed to the mental health and well-being of all individuals, that we are committed to healing and recovery for all those who seek it, and we are committed to inclusion and equity for all people. All those we serve, and all of us.
And we have an opportunity and, I believe, a responsibility to walk boldly into the new territory of social justice with the understanding that it is simply groups of individuals who are the “social” in social justice. It is simply all of those for whom we care, all of those whom we love, all of us.
To introduce myself a bit more personally: I have a partner named Betsy who is a lifelong athlete, and now a fitness director and a personal trainer. I have two wonderful twin daughters, Grace and Esmé, now age 23, and we have a dog named Rosie, who will never be accused of actually guarding the house because her talent lies more in hospitality for all who enter.
I also have two loving and supportive parents who live in California, and I don’t say that just because they happen to be livestreaming this right now, but also because it’s true, and I will share with you my step-father’s sage advice for me about today—speaking as an accomplished career diplomat and public speaker, he instructed me on Wednesday “just keep it clean, kid.”
We are a normal American family—by which I mean that we, like many, like most of us, have been touched by our share of mental health issues, including trauma, including addiction, including anxiety and depression.
In our family, as in so many, we have known the pain of these moments, we have witnessed the struggles to heal, and we have been fortunate to see the promise of recovery.
And, speaking as an openly gay person, I am grateful to come from a family where I have always been accepted just as I am (applause). That applause is for you, mom and Todd out in California.
But while my primary experience as a gay person has been one of acceptance and inclusion, this wasn’t the case for my biological father who himself was gay and who grew up in a very different time and place. Once a Methodist minister, my father finally acknowledged his hidden identity in the 70s and moved to the symbolic mecca of that American moment—Greenwich Village. But his personal journey was difficult, he struggled mightily with depression and substance abuse. In my late teens and early twenties, I cared for him—as best I could at the time—while he was dying of AIDS. At the time my father died he was 48 years-old, he was homeless, and he was living in a Christian shelter in Manhattan. His challenges were painful to witness, and they were certainly not unique to him. We both lost so many, whom we had both so loved.
None of us would wish for anyone the pain and difficulty of my father’s lived experience, nor would we wish for any community or group of people the experience of the enormity of suffering at the height of the AIDS epidemic—much of that suffering fueled by social stigma.
As you might expect, the experience was also traumatic for me—it overwhelmed my 20-year-old capacity to absorb the impact and led to anxiety and depression of my own. It took me many years afterwards to find the help and healing I needed to unwind the long tentacles of trauma.
Three decades later now, my lived experience and that of my father, is the basis of my personal case for hope and my commitment to social justice. Why hope?
Because for one thing, in my lifetime alone, and I will turn 55 this month just FYI, in my lifetime alone we have gone from the Stonewall Riots to “don’t ask, don’t tell” to legalized gay marriage. Who’d have thunk it? Who’d have thunk it? (applause). We’re not done, we have a long way to go, but I would certainly never have expected to see that kind of progress, and certainly never would my father have expected to.
If my father had grown up in a time when gay marriage was possible—in a time when the Missouri church that he loved was led, as it is now, by a Black, gay man with a husband and children—can you imagine what that might have done to his world view or his self-esteem?
I believe that would have been and can be, the social application of a “Before Stage Four” approach (applause). That would have been the early intervention of hope in a world of lesser stigma. That might have been a world in which he could accept himself just as he was—before he learned to be so ashamed of being gay that he knew he had to hide and suppress his true identity and before the corrosive effects of doing so would lead to depression and addiction.
If we are committed to resilience and recovery for individuals, then we are committed to the resilience and recovery of the groups and the communities to whom they belong.
So, before I pivot back to talking about the opportunity before us, I first want to thank you for listening to my story. I never take for granted the gift of being seen in one’s whole humanity, and I know you are a community of people who resonate with the power of bearing witness. So thank you.
Back to you and the work before us in this American moment.
I see MHA as poised to lead the nation in understanding that individual mental health and well-being are fundamental to all the crucial social and public health issues of our day.
We are poised to accelerate our progress in our fight against stigma in a time when public awareness of mental health is unusually high. Individual openness and active advocacy are the antidote and these days we have some remarkable examples of openness to amplify and promote—from Michelle Obama, this year when she acknowledged having depression, to Naomi Osaka to Meghan Markle and even, an apparently American, Prince Harry. Who’d have thunk that either?
So we are poised to accelerate American progress on openness and inclusion. We stand against stigma wherever we see it. We stand with communities of the recovering. We stand for the inclusion and empowerment of those who are marginalized and disenfranchised.
And we are also poised to accelerate our advocacy for racial justice and equity in this American moment. In committing to being an anti-racist alliance, we are committing to the mental wellbeing of historically and systemically oppressed individuals and communities. As Paul said to the delegate assembly yesterday, “It is not stretching the truth to say that ‘racism is a mental health issue.’”
So I see us as poised to continue to seek resilience, recovery, and equity for communities and whole populations. Because we know that communities and whole populations are made up of individuals, just like those we serve, just like those we care about and love, just like all of us.
So I take seriously the honor of succeeding Paul as your next CEO and President, and I look forward to answering the call with my dedicated service to the mission, which begins with all of you.
Thank you very much (applause).
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