Mental Health Awareness Bus Campaign

About the 2007–08 Bus Sign Awareness

• When invited by MilwaukeeRenaissance.com to state my “Utopian Goals” for this campaign website, I realized that they align with those of activists for mental health everywhere: to help to normalize these profoundly human conditions. I selected my painting, “Out of Nowhere” for this sign because it reflects how I and my family felt upon learning that I was having a full-blown manic episode.

• Everyone is encouraged to accept that mental health problems are as natural as diabetes or cancer. People who experience a mental illness can be treated and recover, making life more comfortable for every individual.

• One in four people of all ages and socio-economic classes, regardless of ethnicity, religious or sexual preference, will experience a mental illness. These illnesses have been written into human DNA since the beginning of our species. Mental health problems are not character flaws or immoral. They manifest themselves with a variety of symptoms, which are listed on health and mental health websites. Therefore, ideally, parents need to understand that they, as well as their children, may be vulnerable and must, for their sake, as well as society’s, get regular mental health check-ups.

• The hope is that family doctors will recognize symptoms for all or most mental illnesses, and act responsibly (see . Hopefully, should they find that any of their patients have mental health problems, family doctors will refer these patients to specialists. Psychiatric medications need psychiatric treatment providers who are aware of possible side effects and know that these medications need close monitoring; these experts also know that these prescriptions work best in conjunction with talk therapy.

• The US Senate unanimously passed the parity bill. Now it’s up the House of Representatives. Contact your representatives now and often and request passage of the Mental Health Parity Act of 2007: House of Representatives 1367. New York State Governor George Pataki, a Republican, signed the NYS parity bill into law. In the aftermath of 9/11, he saw first-hand the crucial need for affordable mental health services. =>Read More …