Kindness, empathy, and understanding must replace stigma and discrimination in many of our hearts and minds. This means rethinking our own attitudes. It means raising our children so that if they are confronted with a mental illness in themselves, their families, or friends and neighbors, they aren’t afraid or ashamed to seek help. It means speaking out on behalf of mentally ill people and working for their rights as citizens. - Rosalynn Carter
The former First Lady to the 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, has long been an advocate when it comes to mental health awareness. Her campaign support during her husband’s presidential bid in 1976 saw her become the first candidate’s wife to make her own advocacy promise: to ensure the welfare of the nation’s mentally ill would be her primary focus.
To understand how mental health has been impacted by Carter’s involvement let’s take a quick look at some of her accomplishments in the nearly forty years since.
In 1977 Carter served as the initial honorary chair on the President’s Commission on Mental Health. She’s also served in advisory roles within Georgia’s ‘Governor’s Commission to Improve Services to the Mentally Ill and Emotionally Handicapped.
It was her advocacy on mental health issues that helped bring about the creation of the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 which provided extremely critical government grant funding to community health centers around the country that focused on treatment of mental illness.
She was also instrumental in helping found The Carter Center in 1982. Their primary focus is the support of initiatives on mental health awareness and advocacy and which facilitates legislative action and support of treatment for those impacted by mental illness. It’s located in Atlanta, GA.
It’s been empowering for me personally to see the symbolism of my survival (from a suicide attempt off the Golden Gate Bridge in 2000) and the continued message of hope as they apply to mental health by the fact that I call Atlanta home- which is the headquarters of The Carter Center.
The work that 17th & Montgomery Productions has done in partnership with the The Carter Center over the course of the last two years has been life-changing for me personally.
As I continue to be an advocate for suicide prevention and mental health awareness I look at the work done and success achieved by Mrs. Carter over the course of her life and I feel connected to the issues we stand for in this critical area of our society. I was given a great gift when two years ago upon my wife and I moving to Atlanta we were invited to The Carter Center. We went there to hear First Lady Rosalynn Carter share a powerful message of diligence, drive, determination, and vigor toward changing the landscape of mental health equality. It was a true honor to shake her hand, and thank her for her decades of lived expertise action in chaining America, and the world. Like Carrie Fisher, she paved the path for us to do the work we advocates and activists of mental health do now.
As I always say in my social impact #Storytelling hours we would never be where we are without those who have come before us.
But for all the positive impact her advocacy (and mine) has had on mental health and suicide prevention it’s imperative we talk about one of the biggest deterrents in people being unable to secure and utilize critical treatment:
Insurance.
Simply put the level of access to care is being curtailed by laws that define illness in terms that don’t fit the disease we struggle with when it comes to mental health.
According to the National Institute on Mental Illness Approximately 1 in 25 adults in the U.S.—9.8 million, or 4.0%—experiences a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.
And the risk of associated suicide is greatly impacted by this statistic. It's a number which I firmly believe we can reduce down to zero.
Carter believes, as I strongly do, that mental illness treatment should be covered by insurance on the same levels as other defined physical illnesses of the body. If we don't have mental health, we don't have health. Frankly as she said first ages ago, it should all just be integrated and It should be just health - Rosalynn Carter
We who suffer from a brain disease should be able to get support and treatment as equally as if we had injured an extremity.
Mental health equality in this case at it applies to the insurance gap in this country refers to the requirement that health insurance companies be required to treat mental health and substance abuse issues no differently than physical health services.
And that’s the goal.
The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 has gotten us a little closer to the goal of equal insurance coverage rights and programs as they apply to mental health and substance abuse recovery.
We are living in a time when the sanctity of the Parity Bill is being torn apart. A time when our equality is being jeopardized.
A large majority of the work that The Carter Center supports focuses on reduction of discrimination as they apply to the issue of insurance coverage.
I campaign on a daily basis- in order to help others- in an effort to reduce mental health marginalization. And I believe one day we will have coverage but we need more support.
The massive insurance disparity for the issues we face in the United States regarding mental illness ans substance use alone are disproportionate to the level of care being offered to the people who desperately need help and need the help of those who can make a difference .
People like you and me, like Rosalynn Carter our driving force in mental health hope. Head to