NAMI Convention: A Discussion with Mike Fitzpatrick, Executive Director

RC: NAMI was around for many years before I ever heard of it. I struggled for 10 years with my daughter, who has bipolar and anxiety, without knowing about NAMI as a resource.

MF: One of the interesting things is that our new strategic plan deals directly with that. What we know is that in the mental health community that talks about serious mental illness, NAMI has fairly high visibility. But in the community at large, in many communities, we have no or very little visibility. What we aspire to do is become more visible. You know what AARP is and we all know what AARP does. We know what the Red Cross does. We want to have the same in time visibility in the community so that a consumer or family member knows what NAMI does and how to turn to us. I said earlier that our web site gets about half a million unduplicated visitors per month. About 70% of those don't go in through our home page. So they aren't looking for NAMI information. What they're looking for is basic information. And what we want to do is to reduce that percentage so that people start looking for us instead of looking for "schizophrenia" or "Zyprexa".

RC: It's a big challenge.

MF: It's a huge challenge. But it's something we can do over time. We can sort of chip away at it and learn from what other associations have done.

RC: I had a choice to join a lot of mental health organizations when I was looking for help for my daughter. I didn't know that NAMI started as an organization for family members. Then I heard that someone had stood up and said..."but the consumer is part of the family". Now NAMI is the only organization of any significance that works with both family members and consumers.

MF: No question. Over time, NAMI has morphed into the largest consumer organization in America. Just in terms of sheer numbers of members and our base and our history, it was certainly a family organization. Certainly the NAMI Connection rollout increases our role and the presence of consumers. If you look at my staff of 80 at the NAMI national office, a significant number of them have personal experience with mental illness. We're more diverse, younger, and better reflect our community than we have in the past. We're open to absolutely everyone regardless of age, race, and what have you... I've been in this role as executive director for three and a half years. I have a great staff, great volunteers, and a very supportive board. We're in a very good space. And there's a lot to do, a lot of challenges.

RC: How do you get the word out?

MF: It's really branding. It's the same thing that any company would look at. How do you brand NAMI? We've just finished doing a promotion with the Fox television program "House". They reached out to us and said, "We've done work with the heart association and other health groups. We want to do something with mental illness because we feel that not enough attention is paid to mental illness. And we want to use our visibility." They have 27 million viewers every week. It's the highest rated scripted show on television. But what it did, it gave us a venue in the entertainment press that mental illness rarely gets in a positive way. So we get to talk to Access Hollywood, the E channel, and other venues like that. We need to do more of that. We need to get more outside of our comfort zone and outside the mental health system and talk to the popular press.