S upport and A dvocacy for M ental I llness

1. Support and Advocacy for MentalIllness

2. What SAMI Is All About • SAMI’s mission is to support and advocate for the mental illness community and educate students about mental illness to create greater understanding about mental health.

3. Ideals • To eliminate the stigma attached to mental illness • To provide support to mental health facilities and organizations in the form of charitable drives and volunteering • To spread education and further knowledge about mental illness

4. What we’ll be doing • Discussion about different mental illnesses, how mental illness is viewed, and what can be done to help. • Discussion of how these mental illness occur, side effects (physical, emotional, mental), and how it affects the lives of the people • Discussion about what can be done to help will press upon how members can go about helping the mental illness community

5. Some mental illnesses we’ll be discussing • Schizophrenia • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder • Panic Disorder • Depression

6. Events • Meetings, charitable drives, volunteer trips, movie nights • a) Meetings: • • Meetings on mental illness, specific disorders, treatment, what we can do to help • From: • o Local mental health care professionals • o Professors with knowledge of mental illness • b) Charitable Drives: • • Drives for clothing, books, toiletries, etc. • • Give to day-treatment centers, prison-treatment programs • c) Volunteer Trips: • • Going to places to volunteer • At: • o Day Treatment Centers- GED classes • d) Movie Nights: • • Showing movies that involve mental illness, discuss whether depiction is correct, what it makes you think about mental illness

7. Things SAMI Is Not •Group Therapy or therapy of any kind • Equal to seeing a trained counselor or psychiatrist • Any sort of treatment program • A medication manager – SAMI will not discuss any specific drugs and is not available to give instruction, advice, or commentary on such

8. Basics of Mental Illness

9. What is Mental Illness?

10. A mental illness is a medical condition that disrupts a person's thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning. • Mental illnesses are medical conditions that often result in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life.

11. Mental illnesses can affect persons of any age, race, religion or income. • Serious mental illnesses include major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and borderline personality disorder.

12. One in four adults—approximately 57.7 million Americans—experience a mental health disorder in a given year. One in 17 lives with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder and about one in 10 children live with a serious mental or emotional disorder

13. One-half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14, three-quarters by age 24 • Despite effective treatments, there are long delays—sometimes decades—between the first onset of symptoms and when people seek and receive treatment

14. Fewer than one-third of adults and one-half of children with a diagnosable mental disorder receive mental health services in a given year • Individuals living with serious mental illness face an increased risk of having chronic medical conditions • Adults living with serious mental illness die 25 years earlier than other Americans, largely due to treatable medical conditions

15. Suicide is the eleventh-leading cause of death in the Unites States and the third-leading cause of death for people ages 10-24 years. More than 90 percent of those who die by suicide have a diagnosable mental disorder.

16. Recovery • Mental illnesses are treatable. Most people diagnosed with a serious mental illness can experience relief from their symptoms by actively participating in an individual treatment plan

17. As people become familiar with their illness, they recognize their own unique patterns of behavior. If individuals recognize these signs and seek effective and timely care, they can often prevent relapses. However, because mental illnesses have no cure, treatment must be continuous. • The notion of recovery involves a variety of perspectives. Recovery is a process that includes traditional elements of mental health and aspects that extend beyond medication. Recovery from serious mental illness also includes attaining, and maintaining, physical health as another cornerstone of wellness.

18. The recovery journey is unique for each individual. There are several definitions of recovery; some grounded in medical and clinical values, some grounded in context of community and some in successful living. One of the most important principles is this: recovery is a process, not an event.

19. Please Join! • Leave your email on the sign up sheet in the back • Friend Sami Loyno on facebook