1.3 NAMI
NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness
Assignment:
- Read the PDF Divert to What? Community Services that Enhance Diversion (2020)
- Write a three-page paper, highlighting the major points to this reform.
Clifford W. Beers, (1876-1943) an individual who was diagnosed with a mental illness, author and a mental health advocate for the mental ill. Mr. Beers was institutionalized several times in different “mental” hospitals after experiencing a nervous breakdown. In 1913 he wrote his autobiography A Mind that Found Itself in which he described the deplorable conditions and treatment in the mental hospitals.
Mr. Beers along with other psychiatrists established the National Committee for Mental Hygiene in 1909 in New York City. The mission of the committee was to improve the treatment and condition within all mental hospitals, while conducting research to enhance the quality of psychiatric education, treatment, identifying risk factors. The Mental Hygiene was based on psychiatry, the ideas, the passion for making a difference in the lives of others who inspired professionals in the field of social work, counseling, education, psychologist, health care providers. This movement was one of the first interdisciplinary committees in which all professionals focused on improving the lives of others.
1909 Clifford W. Beers established Mental Health America (MHA) the nation’s leading community-based nonprofit dedicated to addressing the needs of those living with mental illness and promoting the overall mental health of all. Mr. Beers had firsthand knowledge, observations were subjected to many incidents of abuse, inhumane treatment and cruelty by those who were hired to provide treatment to him and other individuals who were hospitalized.
During World War II, the leaders of the National Mental Health Association who worked in state hospitals throughout the United States, witnessed the deplorable and inhumane treatment of patients with mental illnesses who were chained to the hospital walls or put into cages. This horrific abuse inspired Clifford W. Beers and others to commit their lives to improving the lives and treatment for all who suffered from any form of mental illness, this movement changed the way America thinks about persons with mental illness.
The new Mental Health Association chose a bell as their symbol of Hope. Volunteers from the National Headquarters in New York collected the metal restraints from hundreds of mental hospitals across the country and piled them in the building’s lobby. These restraints were then shipped to the McShane bell foundry in Baltimore, Maryland, where in 1953, they were dropped into a crucible and cast into a 300-pound bell.
Please watch this video on mental health from the Mental Health America website. (You will need to scroll down to the video.)