MindMap

Spinning The Advocacy Wheel: MindMap & Elyn Saks

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Spinning the Wheel with MindMap

Last month, the MindMap and STEP team attended Fresh Check Day at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, with a very positive turnout from the student campus population. Fresh Check Days, organized by The Jordan Porco Foundation, are fun and interactive college fairs bringing awareness to mental health resources and coping strategies.

MindMap was one of about 10 different mental health organizations at this festive, food-filled outdoor event.

MindMap also attended Southern Connecticut State University’s Health Fair, where the team networked among 50 health and mental health professionals and groups.

Our team had plenty of opportunities to educate students about the basics of mental health and psychosis with our fun pop quiz “Spinning Wheel” game. A few students shared moving stories with us about family or friends impacted by psychosis, and everyone was happy to take home MindMap t-shirts, pens, and water bottles.

There is still much work to be done in reaching the young population impacted by psychosis, and MindMap is committed to continuing these efforts. Join us in fighting stigma and increasing awareness by checking in with friends and family, or by sharing some of our resources on social media.

If you are interested in hosting an educational event with the MindMap team, please contact us at (203) 589-0388.

Living with Schizophrenia: MacArthur Fellow Elyn Saks

Yale alumni, MacArthur Fellow, and mental health law expert Elyn Saks returned to her alma mater last month to discuss mental health and her award-winning memoir, The Center Cannot Hold: Ethical Dimensions of My Journey through Madness.

Saks joined writer and lecturer Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. Both Saks and Solomon are known for their stigma-shattering TED talks on mental illness.

Saks experienced her first schizophrenic episodes while studying at Yale Law School and Oxford University in the 1980s.

“There’s a tremendous need to implode the myths of mental illness, to put a face on it, to show people that a diagnosis does not have to lead to a painful and oblique life,” Saks told The New York Times in 2011.

The mental health advocates at MindMap had a chance to interview Saks on her recent visit to New Haven. Stay tuned for more of her stories and insights.

Jessica Pollard Elected Chair of APHA’s Mental Health Section

Congratulations to STEP’s Clinical Director, Jessica Pollard, for her election to Chair of the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) Mental Health Section. Pollard also recently partnered up with Michael Hoge to publish their issue brief, “Workforce Development In Coordinated Specialty Care Programs.”

Read more about Pollard’s new role here.