Support and Advocacy for Mental Illness

What SAMI Is All About

• SAMI’s mission is to support and advocate for the mental illness community and educate students about mental illness to create greater understanding about mental health.

Ideals

• To eliminate the stigma attached to mental illness

• To provide support to mental health facilities and organizations in the form of charitable drives and volunteering

• To spread education and further knowledge about mental illness

What we’ll be doing

• Discussion about different mental illnesses, how mental illness is viewed, and what can be done to help.

• Discussion of how these mental illness occur, side effects (physical, emotional, mental), and how it affects the lives of the people

• Discussion about what can be done to help will press upon how members can go about helping the mental illness community

Some mental illnesses we’ll be discussing

• Schizophrenia• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder• Panic Disorder• Depression

Events• Meetings, charitable drives, volunteer trips, movie nights• a) Meetings:• • Meetings on mental illness, specific disorders, treatment, what we can do to

help• From:• o Local mental health care professionals• o Professors with knowledge of mental illness• b) Charitable Drives:• • Drives for clothing, books, toiletries, etc.• • Give to day-treatment centers, prison-treatment programs• c) Volunteer Trips:• • Going to places to volunteer• At:• o Day Treatment Centers- GED classes• d) Movie Nights:• • Showing movies that involve mental illness, discuss whether depiction is

correct, what it makes you think about mental illness

Things SAMI Is Not

• Group Therapy or therapy of any kind • Equal to seeing a trained counselor or psychiatrist• Any sort of treatment program• A medication manager – SAMI will not discuss any specific drugs and is not available to give instruction, advice, or commentary on such

Basics of Mental Illness

What is Mental Illness?

• A mental illness is a medical condition that disrupts a person's thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning.

• Mental illnesses are medical conditions that often result in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life.

• Mental illnesses can affect persons of any

age, race, religion or income.

• Serious mental illnesses include major

depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder,

obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), panic

disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder

(PTSD) and borderline personality disorder.

• One in four adults—approximately 57.7

million Americans—experience a mental

health disorder in a given year. One in 17

lives with a serious mental illness such as

schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar

disorder and about one in 10 children live

with a serious mental or emotional

disorder

• One-half of all lifetime cases of mental illness

begin by age 14, three-quarters by age 24

• Despite effective treatments, there are long

delays—sometimes decades—between the

first onset of symptoms and when people seek

and receive treatment

• Fewer than one-third of adults and one-half of

children with a diagnosable mental disorder receive

mental health services in a given year

• Individuals living with serious mental illness face an

increased risk of having chronic medical conditions

• Adults living with serious mental illness die 25 years

earlier than other Americans, largely due to

treatable medical conditions

• Suicide is the eleventh-leading cause of

death in the Unites States and the third-

leading cause of death for people ages

10-24 years. More than 90 percent of

those who die by suicide have a

diagnosable mental disorder.

Recovery

• Mental illnesses are treatable. Most people

diagnosed with a serious mental illness can

experience relief from their symptoms by

actively participating in an individual

treatment plan

• As people become familiar with their illness, they recognize their own unique patterns of behavior. If individuals recognize these signs and seek effective and timely care, they can often prevent relapses. However, because mental illnesses have no cure, treatment must be continuous.

• The notion of recovery involves a variety of perspectives. Recovery is a process that includes traditional elements of mental health and aspects that extend beyond medication. Recovery from serious mental illness also includes attaining, and maintaining, physical health as another cornerstone of wellness.

• The recovery journey is unique for each individual.

There are several definitions of recovery; some

grounded in medical and clinical values, some

grounded in context of community and some in

successful living. One of the most important

principles is this: recovery is a process, not an event.

Please Join!

• Leave your email on the sign up sheet in the back

• Friend Sami Loyno on facebook