The first week of October is Mental Illness Awareness Week. It was established by the U.S. Congress in 1990 as a way of recognizing the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ (NAMI) efforts in spreading knowledge about mental illness. The NAMI website has a number of resources for those who want to help out, including sample press releases, sample letters to the editor and an idea book. Tuesday (today) is also a the National Day of Prayer for Mental Illness Recovery and Understanding. NAMI provides a number of resources for communicating with faith groups on their site as well. A full press release plus a list of resources is available on the NAMI site here. The .eps files can be tricky to open, but can be embedded in Word documents.
Commentary
NAMI has done a good job, not simply of providing a top-down awareness week in which they provide all of the events, but of providing a series of resources for those interested in mental health to start their own events. They even have such things as prayers (which are of mixed quality), ideas on how to start an art show or contribute to a public library, among many other things. Another important thing about the NAMI materials is that they stay largely positive. Too many awareness campaigns start with a sentence along the lines of, “Too many mentally ill people are killing themselves, and it’s your fault because you’re ignorant.” NAMI’s campaign avoids this sort of blaming, and instead focuses on ways of disseminating information.
Related posts:
- Bicyclist Rides for Mental Health Awareness
- NAMI Supports Embattled Mississippi Clinic
- Chicago Police Develop New Protocols For Mental Illness
- Misuse of Mental Illness Terms: BBC
- Maclean’s Magazine Covers Mental Illness on Campus
