NAMI/National less than honest with members

Call 202 224 3121 or go here and urge your U.S. Representative to co-sponsor HR 3717, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act.

NAMI State and local chapters do brilliant work trying to improve care for people with the most serious mental illnesses and provide comfort to them and their families. NAMI/National is ignoring the most seriously ill in order to be politically correct.

Representative Tim Murphy (R. PA) has proposed HR3717 the “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis” that does much of what NAMI local and state members have been begging for.

Please send letter in Support of Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act

If you are part of any organization (state or local NAMI, MHA, Prison Reform, Consumer Group, etc) that wants to help persons with serious mental illness, please send a letter on your letterhead, to Rep. Tim Murphy urging passage of Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (HR 3717). They want as many letters of support from organizations as possible.

You can see the NAMI/NYS letter below and use it as a model. You can see other letters (ex. NAMI National, American Psychiatric Assoc., etc) at http://murphy.house.gov/helpingfamiliesinmentalhealthcrisisact#Letters%20of%20Support

New NAMI Needed: National Alliance on SERIOUS Mental Illness (NASMI)

I think there needs to be a National Membership Org that focuses exclusively on Serious Mental Illness including important politically incorrect issues that NAMI refuses to address like preservation of enough psychiatric hospital beds, expansion of Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT), and relaxation of civil commitment laws.

One way to get it going would be to get former NAMI National Board Members to lend their name, form a nucleus. Perhaps call the new organization the National Alliance on Serious Mental Illness (NASMI)

State and local organizations can eventually make a decision as to whether they prefer to be part of the existing NAMI, or the one that makes serious mental illness their number one priority.

I believe the following former National NAMI Board Members might be willing to help: Eleanor Owen, Bernie Schell, Gerald Tarutis, Carla Jacobs, perhaps Fred Frese, Richard Lamb,and moi. If you know of more names, add them to this post.

Here is the National Alliance on Serious Mental Illness Facebook Page where you can discuss the idea https://www.facebook.com/seriousmentalillness

Mental Health First Aid Unproven & Should Not Be Funded

• Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) lacks sufficient proof it helps people with serious mental illness. 
• The venders of the program and those who want to purchase it, have convinced Congress to introduce a bill to have taxpayers pay for it. 
• Those funds would be better used on programs proven to help people with serious mental illness.

(Note: If anyone has research contrary to that which we discuss, please post it in comments section. Our goal is to make sure our information and conclusions are accurate. Thank you)

Background: Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is a commercially available training program created in Australia and now sold by the National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and the Missouri Department of Mental Health to non-profits in the United States. The training program purports to teach people to identify the symptoms of mental illness in others and connect them to help. They also license others to be trainers for a fee. Participants get a certificate saying they received the training.

As part of his “Now is the Time” initiative in response to the shootings at Newtown, President Obama announced support  for  Mental Health First Aid. The organizations above, plus NAMI, MHA and others are now lobbying Congress to spend $20 million dollars for passage of The Mental Health First Aid Act of 2013 (S. 153/H.R. 274). The program is shown to make those who receive and give the training feel better, but has not been shown to have an impact on those they are supposed to be helping: people with serious mental illness.

Congress should not fund MHFA, and instead use the funds for programs that work. (Read more)

Lynn Shuster: Hero of Mental Illness Advocacy

I once wrote an essay on my hero, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey. Today, it's about another hero: Lynn Shuster. Lynn Shuster (and her partner in crime, Mary Kirkland, who I don't know as well, but admire from afar), were until recently leaders of NAMI/Buffalo. They are so extraordinary that the Buffalo News ran an article on their decision to step down.

Lynn has been my idol ever since I joined the movement (CA 1982) to improve care for the most seriously ill. She was older than me, and different than every other NAMI member. How? Lynn doesn't --as she would say, "take any shit". She makes these bald, impolitic, truthful statements about how horrific the mental illness treatment system. Everyone else was pulling their punches and ignoring the elephant in the room: treatment for the most seriously ill sucked and no one was doing anything about it. And she would reel in horror when others who called themselves 'advocates', tried to say how nice Commissioner so-and-so was. "He could be the nicest man in the world. Our job is to make him do his damn job and give the seriously ill better care!" she would say (usually followed by "sheesh").

I once wrote an article, "NAMI's Delusions: Counterproductive Beliefs Held by Mental Health Advocates" almost entirely based on what Lynn taught me.

Lynn has this ability to focus on the most important issues, even while all other advocates are focusing on feel-good ones. While they were trying to create pretty brochures, Lynn was trying to save psychiatric hospitals. While they were criticizing the lack of "people first" language, she was trying to stop the system from jailing people merely because they had mental illness.
Lynn taught me that being at the table isn't as important as making progress and that the two are often inversely related. In a note about her retirement, she wrote:

Never trust a bureaucrat. It's THEIR money (and power and prestige, it's just our loved one's lives. And we know which comes out on top. "Making nice" makes you feel good, but doesn't result in success. News reporters are our friends. Tell the truth, the REAL truth.... Maintain a sense of humor even in dark days--we all need to laugh. Persevere. Persevere some more.... 

 Lynn (and Mary): You're right. I'm gonna "persevere". I'm gonna start a new Facebook Group called, "Bring Lynn and Mary Out of Retirement".