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Mike Fitzpatrick
This is number two in a series of seven blogs made possible by the encouragement and financial support of The Health Central Network. All represent interviews with senior officers of NAMI [National Alliance on Mental Illness] or other luminaries that attended the NAMI 2007 annual convention. These interviews cover a wide range of topics that should be of interest to everyone that is involved in one fashion or another with mental health issues.
Mike Fitzpatrick, MSW, is the Executive Director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Previously, he served as the Director of NAMI's Policy Research Institute and as NAMI's National Director of Policy. Prior to joining NAMI in 1999, Mike held senior management positions in state government, with non-profit agencies, and in the private sector. He served in the Maine State Legislature (his home state) and was House Chair of the Health and Human Services Committee from 1994 - 1996. Over the years, he has developed successful education, employment, housing, outreach, and rehabilitation programs.
RC: There have been so many changes in NAMI over the last few years. I'd like you to take a few minutes and review the highlights.
MF: We're a large, sprawling organization with 1,100 affiliates around the country. We do a variety of programs. We have a number of signature education programs. Thousands of people around America are involved with them daily... from peer programs like "Peer-to-Peer" and "In Our Own Voice" to "Family-to-Family" (which is focused on family members), and provider education programs. Partially because of our partnership with HealthCentral and partially through our association with other sites, we're a very large source of on-line information. Our web site (http://www.nami.org/) now gets over half a million unduplicated visitors every month from people who are looking for basic information on major mental illness.
And our political advocacy is certainly something that we're known for. In every state capital, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, we're involved with state legislators as well as county and local governments, trying to change mental health systems and build a mental health system we can be proud of. We're certainly very visible on capitol hill.
There is a lot of work in front of us. We produced and sent out our innovative "Grading the States" report, where we graded all 50 states on the adult system of care and their investment in services. We gave America a "D". It was a well earned "D". By using the report [card] format, if your state got an F, there were some things they did well, but there are remedial things they need to improve. We've had the opportunity to work with mental health authorities, commissioners, and legislators around the country who took our report very seriously and have been working with us on how to change their systems. We're gearing up to do another report for 2008. That's going to be a major undertaking.
