Mental Health Notes

Team Up With everyminute.org And Make Your Voice Heard!

by Alicia Sparks, NAMI Affiliation Leader on March 31st, 2008

Remember a few Saturday Sanities ago when I tipped you all off on www.everyminute.org and its super cool petition-signing tool? Well, Jace Freeman from www.everyminute.org has graciously sent MHN some more detailed information about the Web site, its mission, and how you can get involved.

I’ll let him do the talking:

everyminute.org is a grassroots campaign organizing a lobbying force to advocate before Congress to accelerate mental health research to promote recovery and resilience through individual treatment plans that eliminate the need for trial and error diagnosis. Funded by a grant from the Jene and Curtis Graves Foundation, the website, http://www.everyminute.org, was started by a NAMI member that understands the effect that mental illness has on a family.

So, what is an individualized treatment plan? An individualized treatment plan eliminates trial and error diagnosis by objectively diagnosing disorders by analyzing genes and other physical factors like biomarkers in the blood. A recovery plan is then created identifying the best drugs to treat the individual’ illness itself, no longer just reducing the symptoms the individual is experiencing. When side effects can be worse than the illness, imagine a treatment plan that is specifically put together to be the best possible effective recovery option for each unique person. With the proper funding for mental health research, individualized treatment plans are within 10 years of becoming a viable method of diagnosing and treating mental illness. However, recently research has not being properly funded and a ‘chilling’ effect is now happening where less money means young researchers are abandoning the mental health research.

Where does everyminute.org come in? everyminute.org is giving voice to the millions of Americans that are sick of haphazardly trying medications to find the magic cocktail for their recovery. When a suicide is attempted every minute, the time is now to push for individualized treatment plans that offer stability and hope. According to NIMH, there are over 57 million Americans affected by mental illness personally every year. everyminute.org is the unifying coalition that will organize these individuals and their friends and family into a lobbying force that will change national priority by the sheer weight of collected signatures.

How can you help? All everyminute.org is asking for is a signature. The website has an innovative signature capture tool where advocates can physically sign the online declaration in support of mental health.

Just by word-of-mouth promotion, over 100 people have signed the Online Declaration in under two weeks as many Americans have recognized the need for the campaign.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over and sign the declaration to make your voice heard!

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