Families and friends face extraordinary challenges helping a loved one enter and remain in mental health treatment. They also will face a bewildering mental health system and terribly uneven quality of care. They need information, support and coaching.

For nearly 25 years, Patty Duke has traveled around the country educating audiences on brain disorders such as hers and speaking out about the stigma that goes along with being diagnosed with a "mental illness."

For more than 40 years, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter has been an unrelenting crusader for people suffering from mental illness.

Today we need to acknowledge that too many children in our nation are left to struggle with a host of stressful circumstances--violence, divorce, poverty, war, to mention just a few, without effective supports.