Health Affairs Article: The October issue of the journal Health Affairs, which focuses on comparative effectiveness research, features an article by Mental Health America's Dr. David Shern, Kirsten Beronio, Chin-Chin Minniear and Sarah Steverman. "Comparative Effectiveness Research In Mental Health: An Advocate's Perspective" examines the controversy surrounding a large real-world trial of schizophrenia treatments and concludes that the initial presentation of results led to overly simplistic policy suggestions that had the potential to harm patients. Patient advocacy groups helped illuminate these consequences and helped stimulate further discussion and analysis.

Support Community Wins Challenge: The Mental Health America Support Community has won the Inspire Partner Challenge for achieving the greatest growth in new members. Created in partnership with Inspire, which builds trusted and informative online communities, the Mental Health America Support Community is a place where individuals can connect with others, find valuable resources and gain inspiration. "We are very pleased to win the Inspire Challenge and thank everyone who joined the Mental Health America Support Community and made a connection," said David L. Shern, Ph.D., president and CEO of Mental Health America. "Inspire is fostering vibrant, effective and trusted social networks and we are pleased to work with them. We know everyone who joined our community is finding support, encouragement, compassion and gaining inspiration from others."

New Parity Toolkit: The Parity Implementation Coalition, which is made up of Mental Health America and other organizations that worked to win passage of the federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, has created a toolkit to aid individuals seeking recovery, their families, providers and advocates understand their new rights and benefits under the law. The toolkit, which is linked here, is designed to be a resource on how to better communicate with plans, how to ably prepare and document information should disputes arise with a health plan over coverage or reimbursement and how to better understand basic appeals rights and procedures. ::

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