How The National Alliance on Mental Illness Saved My Life!

Even though my sabbatical is over, I (and volunteers who have emerged) remain diligent working to further develop The Digital Mental Health Project. The work of mapping the benefits, risks, opportunities and applications of digital technology in addressing mental health and illness has proven to be as challenging as it is gratifying.

Amid this work, I have gotten a lot of question about my volunteer board work with the National Alliance on Mental Illness' (NAMI) Main Line (Philadephia) Pennsylvania Chapter, and what one can do to help or get help when faced with mental health crises.

In the November 2014 issue of Healthcare Marketer's Exchange, a long time pharma industry magazine published by Nancy Leonard, I wrote an article expressing how I and my family coped with a family mental health crises which overtook us, and how NAMI was instrumental to our education, resilience and eventual contribution to others facing similar crises. I go on to suggest ways that those who want to, can help. I am reposting this article here as my NAMI work has shown me that there are few of us who are not touched by mental health crisis somewhere in our families and networks. At the same time, I am always disheartened by how challenging it seems to be for people to get the information, assistance and resources they need when in crisis.

This is why I write this article and I hope it is helpful to you and those you care about. Here is a link (http://hmexchange.com/archive/DeLarge_1114.pdf.) to this article (as PDF) if the article image below is too small for you.

Don't hesitate to reach to me if I can be of assistance in guiding you to information or resources related to this subject.