Home » Mental Illness » Page 229

A Mental Health Quiz

by

Eleven Questions about Mental Health  

           Question one:  A recent president appointed a commission to study mental illness. Critics immediately attacked that commission and recruited a celebrity to blast it. What president appointed The President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health: Achieving the Promise: Transforming Mental Health Care in America and who was the celebrity who criticized it? 

  1. President George H.W. Bush and Tom Cruise
  2. President Bill Clinton and John Travolta
  3. President George W. Bush and Patch Adams
  4. President George W. Bush and Britney Spears 

Click to continue…

Using Music to Combat Stigma

by

Without a journey there’s no return

It’s the inevitable way of growing up

        Lyrics from “Listen” by Tiago Bettencourt and Cool Hipnoise

Encontrar+SE, a grassroots mental health advocacy group started by Filipa Pahla in Portugal, recently found an imaginative way to fight stigma. A few years ago, Filipa persuaded twenty of her nation’s most popular singers and song writers to participate in a ten-month long, anti-stigma campaign. 

A different artist performed an original song each month about mental illness. The song writers were asked to compose lyrics that first described a problem and then offered a solution. The songs were broadcast on the radio and in music videos on television.

The first three songs introduced listeners to mental illnesses. The themes were : Discriminating/Integrating, Denying/Accepting, and Separating/Uniting. 

Click to continue…

On the Edge in Utah

by

Whenever I go out-of-town to give a speech, I try to encourage local reporters to investigate mental health services in their communities. When I visited Utah last year to speak at the state’s NAMI convention, I was interviewed by Nancy R. Green, a television producer at KUED, which is affliated with the University of Utah.  

The great thing about Nancy is that she is an investigative reporter, so she wasn’t satisfied listening to me talk about what happened to Mike and my investigation in the Miami Dade Pre-Trial Detention Center for my book CRAZY: A Father’s Service Through America’s Mental Health Madness.  After she spent time talking to me on camera, she launched her own investigation to discover what is happening today in Utah. Her report, On the Edge, is top-notch and provides a real public service to the state.

Click to continue…

Apology from NPR’s CEO to NAMI

by

Last Friday afternoon, Michael J. Fitzpatrick, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, received a telephone call from Vivian Schiller, the CEO of National Public Radio, during which she apologized for a comment that she made during the firing of Juan Williams.  

Schiller made a flippant remark during the recent Williams’ controversy, saying that my former Washington Post colleague and friend, needed to consult “his psychiatrist.”

Click to continue…

Will Portugal Copy Our Mistakes?

by

 The advocacy group Encontrar+SE invited me to Porto, Portugal recently to speak about the closing of our state mental hospitals here in the U.S. This was my third overseas trip, having gone to Iceland and Brazil last year.  

Founded in 2006, Encontrar+SE   is the creation of Filipa Palha, a psychologist, university professor, and determined mental health activist who is trying to make Portuguese health officials accountable.

The government there has announced plans to close all of the nation’s mental hospitals, but it has not allocated any money nor taken any steps to create community-based mental health services.

Sound familiar?

Click to continue…

NAMI Joins In Correcting NPR’s CEO

by
Michael Fitzpatrick, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, has joined me in complaining about an offensive remark that Vivian Schiller, the CEO and President of National Public Radio, said after firing Juan Williams. 
The day after I wrote on my blog about Schiller’s offensive comment, Mike fired off a letter to NPR and wrote a blog of his own posted on NAMI’s webpage chastising Schiller and asking NAMI members to write letters of complaint about her stigmatizing comment.