JB: This makes sense in a Dicken’s novel, but does not make sense in 2007. This degree of ignorance has willfulness behind it. Here again, our culture is not willing to understand what we need to do. Now we had one unusual sign of a social contract and it occurred with Prop 63 in California. The population passed a proposition saying that anyone who earned over a million dollars would give a percentage of that million dollars to the mental health system for the care of people with mental illness. So we are now working very hard in California with all of our programs because the only money they are allowed to spend is with projects that must be new and innovative… So we’re doing our very best to get all of our programs into California under this banner of new, innovative, effective, science based programs. Peer programming is now an event in this country. It was not before. We are now providing services. NAMI really is. We reach 12,000 to 15,000 people a year with Family-to-Family. And that’s now a community service, which always needed to be there.
RC: I tell all the In Our Own Voice presenters that I train that they are in fact performing a very important social service. And they come to believe that; they understand that. Once they’ve given one or two presentations, you see the changes in their faces.
JB: Oh, they are wonderful. What it’s done for them. To be involved in something that is meaningful, that is effective. In many cases, it’s their first step back into the world.
RC: What new programs are you working on?
JB: Our newest program is called NAMI Connection, where we hope in five years, we will have trained consumers all over the country through our NAMI state affiliate organizations to run daily support groups across America. Because we know consumers in the first stages of recovery…that is a wonderful place for them to be. And they all tell us, if we’d had this support group, it would have made such a world of difference. So this has been rolled out at our convention here in San Diego… So we’re very persistent in our department. We keep rolling out programs that are going to make a difference. We see this as our duty, our obligation, and I must say, as our joy.
