(1-4-21)  John Snook is resigning as executive director at the Treatment Advocacy Center after six years. In this Q. and A. departing interview, he discusses the role of TAC.

Question: Why do we need TAC? What makes TAC unique besides the fact that it doesn’t accept Big Pharma money?

TAC plays a role that no other mental health organization does – it’s the only organization focused exclusively on the care of those with severe mental illness. Those with severe mental illness unfortunately don’t have a lot of champions; it’s TAC’s job to ensure that their needs aren’t ignored by policymakers or the mental health community.

The sad fact is that it’s much easier to make the case for mental health than it is for mental illness reform. People don’t want to be reminded of the homeless woman on the street corner or the psychotic man trapped in solitary confinement. And so we often see the conversation drift to talk about everyone’s mental health and away from tough issues like the role of untreated mental illness in fatal encounters with law enforcement.

TAC is there to remind us that unless we have those difficult conversations, nothing is going to get better and those most in need will continue to be left behind. 

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(1-1-21)  John Snook is resigning as executive director at the Treatment Advocacy Center after six years overseeing its operations, the non-profit announced today. He has accepted a job as Director of Government Relations and Strategic Initiatives at the National Association for Behavioral Healthcare, a Washington DC-based association that represents America’s largest psychiatric hospital chains.

His departure creates openings at the helms of two major mental health non-profits. Mental Health America’s President and CEO Paul Gionfriddo announced earlier this month that he is retiring in the new year. MHA is the oldest  mental health advocacy group founded by former mental patients.

TAC was founded in 1988 by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey to advocate “for the elimination of barriers to effective treatment for individuals with severe mental illness.” Its focus has always been on serious mental illnesses. One of its core missions is to advocate for greater use of Assisted Outpatient Treatment. It also has pushed for more inpatient crisis care beds. TAC’s current Director of Advocacy, Lisa Dailey, will serve as TAC’s acting director until its board selects a successor.

I was told that John is leaving on good terms for career advancement. NABH is about twice the size of TAC in gross revenues. NABH members include more than 800 specialty psychiatric hospitals, general hospital psychiatric and addiction treatment units, residential treatment centers, youth services organizations, and other providers of care.

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During a two minute clip, one of my favorite humanitarians explains why he washed the feet of homeless Bostonians. 

(12-24-20)  For Dr. James J. O’Connell, it began during his residency by washing the feet of a homeless man.

One homeless client wondered aloud how skilled of a doctor O’Connell was if he had been assigned such a humbling task.

But it was that simple act of kindness which opened his eyes to the importance of treating individuals who are homeless as people of worth and launched his career as a street doctor to Boston’s homeless.

I was delighted when CBS’s Sunday Morning show featured Dr. O’Connell recently during a segment called Promoting the Power of Kindness.The eight minute segment raises questions about whether kindness can be taught or is a born trait for some.

I met him when he joined the board of directors of the Corporation For Supportive Housing, a national leader in building housing and developing programs that help individuals in need live independently. (If you want to be impressed read Dr. O’Connell’s bio at the end of his blog.) 

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(12-21-20) I asked Luna Greenstein, who works at NAMI national as a senior manager, to tell me how the nation’s largest, grassroots mental health advocacy organization responded to the challenges of 2020.

The Growth of NAMI’s Mission in 2020

By Luna Greenstein

This year has been filled with adversity on many levels, but it is in times of adversity that we are forced to grow, to evolve. It is also in times of adversity that we tend to bond with our fellow humans who are facing the same challenges.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)’s evolution during 2020 is a perfect example of this.

We started this year like any of our last 40 years —  focused on our mission to better the lives of Americans with mental illness and their families. We were updating our programs to keep with the times, bringing people into our community through our awareness campaigns, and bringing our State Organizations and Affiliates throughout the country together to ensure we held a united front.

We also had a new CEO start in January, Dan H. Gillison Jr., the first Black American to lead the organization since its founding in 1979. As it turns out, he was exactly the right person at the right time.

When the pandemic hit in March, our mission expanded to face the challenge ahead. While we were still focused on our grassroots mission, we found ourselves with an increased need to help  all Americans, not just those with mental illness, cope with this crisis that was now impacting everyone’s mental health.

A Huge Undertaking : Becoming “everything to everyone.”

As you can imagine, this was a huge undertaking.

But no one was better suited to do this than NAMI. We are truly the only mental health organization that wants to “be everything to everyone.” While this isn’t always possible, we certainly try.

We are an Alliance made up of thousands of people who, simply put, care about other people and their mental health and want to help them have access to the resources, tools and care people need to cope with the challenges of mental health issues. Lastly, we are a group of people who are extremely familiar with discomfort — all of us have a reason why we are so dedicated to this mission — and, to put it mildly, this pandemic has been uncomfortable for everyone.

How did we change?

One of our goals at NAMI is to “meet people where they are.”  Well, now they were all at home. NAMI had to find ways to be there with everyone, too. The Alliance banded together to help our Affiliates and State Organizations transition their education classes and peer support groups to an online format.

The NAMI HelpLine switched to being remote for the first time in our history, and we increased our capacity significantly to handle the huge influx of calls from the new wave of Americans experiencing mental health issues for the first time.

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(12-18-20) A group is urging the incoming Biden administration to appoint individuals with lived mental health experiences to leadership positions in the White House and at SAMHSA and reverse changes that Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz has implemented as the first Assistant Secretary of Mental Health and Substance Abuse.

In a policy paper entitled: Back to Better Behavioral Health prepared for the Biden transition team, the group writes:

“The Biden Administration should look to new leadership at SAMHSA that is uniquely skilled to lead the way in helping our nation to heal by implementing evidence-based policies that advance the principles of recovery, resilience, peer support and trauma informed care. For example, people with lived experience of mental illness and trauma should be placed in high leadership roles to bring back meaning and morale to an agency that evidenced “considerable turnover and declining morale’ “

The group proposes creating a new peer position for Behavioral Health inside the White House and elevating “the voice of persons with lived experience and their families (in) all federal federal agencies.” It also wants to strengthen the IMD Exclusion, increase funding for Protection and Advocacy organizations, and restore funding for the Alternatives Conference.

These recommendations would signal a shift in direction – once again – at SAMHSA. If adopted, some would turn back the clock to how the department used to operate.Click to continue…

Thanks to so many of you who congratulated my son, Kevin, yesterday on his completion of his Masters Degree in Social Work. I deeply appreciate your support.

(12-16-20) I’ve been fortunate to participate in a three-day summit this week whose speakers and attendees are focusing on decriminalizing mental illnesses.

I joined two other authors Monday in discussing the problem – more than two million Americans with mental illnesses being booked into jails each year.

Click here to watch the authors’ panel that I participated in along with Dr. Christine Montross, author of Waiting for An Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration and Alisa Roth, author of Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness. Our discussion was moderated by Norman Ornstein, a nationally known political scientist who lost his son, Matthew, to mental illness.

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