National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations

National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations: "National Coalition of Mental Health
Consumer/Survivor Organizations"

The Power of a National Voice:
The Coalition Enters a New Era
On November 28, 2006, the collective voice of the mental health consumer/survivor movement was heard on Capitol Hill for the first time. On that day, two representatives of the National Coalition of Mental Health Consumer/Survivor Organizations had hour-long meetings with aides to Senator Edward Kennedy (Health and Human Services Authorization), Senator Tom Harkin (chair of the subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Appropriations) and Congressman Patrick Kennedy (House lead on mental health).

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Notes From Our First In Person
(Face-to-Face) Organizational Meeting
October 26, 2006, Portland, Oregon
The room was filled to capacity - 130 consumer/survivors from across the country gathered to continue organizing our national voice. This was a time of great celebration and anticipation. We are putting old differences aside and coming together in a new spirit of cooperation to form our own genuine voice. We declared that our movement rallies behind the principle of nothing about us without us.

After music, pizza, salad, greeting one another and socializing, the town meeting style gathering began. Everyone received a handout of information on the coalition to date, such as the mission, statement of purpose, website, and a membership application. We had a circular seating pattern, with seven members of the steering committee or their alternates (Dan Fisher, Joseph Rogers, Sally Zinman, Mary Blake, Emily Hoffman, Doug DeVoe, and Jane Winterling) and our newly hired director of Public Policy, Lauren Spiro introducing themselves.

Dan Fisher gave a summary of our progress in organizing in the last six months. Though there have been several attempts to form a national voice of consumer/survivors over the last 20 years, the conditions seem most favorable now. We as a people are realizing that our need to organize outweighs our need to assert our individual differences. The constant threats to the SAMHSA funding of 19 statewide consumer/survivor groups, Alternatives Conferences, and TA centers have to be countered. There is a threat to the very existence of SAMHSA. There is a need to ensure that the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health Report (www.mentalhealthcommission.gov) for a transformation to a recovery-based, consumer-driven system are carried out. There has been the growth of a number of strong statewide organizations.

The current building of trust among consumer/survivor leaders enables a new cooperation. Dan described that in May, the National Empowerment Center (NEC) obtained a grant from the Public Welfare Foundation for the purpose of organizing a national coalition. (The early history of the Coalition is on this website). The purpose of the meeting was to report on progress to date, to introduce the Steering Committee and Lauren Spiro, and especially to gain feedback from the gathered representatives to help guide the further formation of the Coalition. Each of the Steering Committee members then gave a brief talk on what they would like to see this Coalition become.

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