Navigating the mental health system
Mental Illness Policy Org receives hundreds of requests for help. Following are documents we have prepared that will answer 90% of the questions we are often asked. Because we have no staff and don’t know what local services are available where you are, we suggest you contact local or state resources for help with your own situation. Organizations that may have local knowledge are the local or state chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI); a state affiliate of Mental Health America; or Disability Rights [Name of State].
I strongly suggest that before contacting any organization, including ours, you know exactly
- what your biggest current problem is,
- what you want the outcome to be and
- who can make that happen.
Then contact them. In all correspondence, you should make your first sentence be what you want the person you are corresponding with to do to fix the biggest problem you are having right now. There is no need to recite what happened during multiple prior years of substandard treatment. Few of us have time to go through all that. So be specific in first sentence what current problem is and what you want whoever you are writing to to do.
Sorry we don’t have staff to provide one-on-one consultations. If this info does help you or you would like to support our work which is focused on improving policies so the seriously mentally ill can get treatment before tragedy, please consider making a tax-deductible donation via PayPal by using the secure link at bottom of this page. Thank you.
-DJ Jaffe
1/2019