President’s Column with Dr. David Shern

We Celebrated our Legacy and Forged our Future

It is an immense honor to serve as Mental Health America’s president during our Centennial year. Looking back on our Annual Conference and Gala Celebration -- where we came together to Celebrate the Legacy of our Founder Clifford Beers and committed ourselves to Forging the Future of the mental health movement in America -- I have asked myself many times what Clifford Beers would think of the organization he founded after 100 years

I think that we’ve done much to realize Beers’ vision and that, today, we are poised to boldly move forward to more fully realize his initial dream. If we remember the relatively non-existent state of mental health science in 1909, the shameful treatment of persons with mental illnesses in state and private hospitals and the public’s perceptions of mental illnesses, we’ve made enormous progress. We’ve dramatically improved public knowledge and attitudes, neuroscience is arguably the most exciting area in science, and treatment is much more available and effective than 100 years ago.

Mental Health America has stimulated or been part of every major mental health accomplishment during the last century—starting with hospital reform at the turn on the Century, the development of ‘scientific psychiatry’ and the mental hygiene movement though the founding of NIMH, the CMHC movement and into the current era of rehabilitation and recovery. The 2008 passage of the Domenici/Wellstone Parity and Addiction Equity Act is our most recent achievement.

One of the great achievements of this year will be the founding of the The Gardens at Saint Elizabeths–A National Memorial of Recovered Dignity. The ceremony at the beginning of the Centennial Conference week was one of the most memorable and poignant occasions of the conference and one that surely would have pleased Mr. Beers.

This memorial at the Saint Elizabeths cemetery will honor the thousands of former state hospital patients who died in the hospital and who are now often buried in unmarked graves on hospital grounds.   Over 4,000 former patients of Saint Elizabeths Hospital, many of whom are civil war veterans, are buried in the cemetery.  These unknown individuals, abandoned in life, will now be remembered and given voice through the Gardens.  At the ceremony, John Morris and I unveiled a granite monument that holds a quote from Clifford Beers: “I must fight in the open.”  This was Beers’ response to the suggestion that he not disclose his mental illness in leading the movement.  He chose to fight in the open.   

Larry Fricks, Mental Health America Board member, has worked for many months to organize this dedication and dedicated  years to champion the memorial.  The service at Saint Elizabeths set a perfect tone for our Centennial Conference and Gala Celebration.  As I walked the grounds of Saint Elizabeths with fellow advocates, I thought of how proud I was and how the Beers’ words will resonate for centuries to come. 

While I’m certain that Beers would applaud our progress, he also would realize that we’ve got much left to accomplish. We must:

• fight in the open to eliminate prejudice and , discrimination against persons with mental health and substance use conditions. 

• fight in the open so everyone is free to share their story and the hope of recovery.

• fight in the open so mental health is not treated as a stepchild in our health care system, but an essential part of health.   

• fight in the open so our country approaches mental health with the same urgency as other health problems—for our friends, families and our veterans.

• fight in the open to unleash the power of prevention and reclaim the 25 years of lost life for people with severe mental illness.

• fight in the open to remove the shackles and chains of inequality and poverty and bridge cultural differences to end disparities because, as Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane of all inequalities.

• fight in the open and raise our voices into a chorus that echoes in the halls of Congress and around the country so our message is heard loud and clear. 

With you and the millions of mental health consumers and advocates, our movement is ready to take the next great steps for mental health. Let’s forge ahead into the next century.     

David L. Shern