(Nov. 8, 2017) Today, we celebrate the many contributions of Doris Fuller in her seven years here at the Treatment Advocacy Center. Her work as communications director, executive director and chief of research helped establish the Treatment Advocacy Center as the force it is today. But it was her passion, her willingness to share her family's story to help others that made her a transcendent force for treatment reform.
We are pleased to announce that Doris has joined our Honorary Advisory Committee and will continue making contributions to the office of research and public affairs, in addition to speaking and advocating for mental illness issues.
John Snook
Executive Director
Serious mental illness can be isolating. As if the challenges of living with a chronic psychiatric disease were not enough, the symptoms, stereotypes and stigmas that surround the most severe of these conditions can seem to render us invisible – ignored or rejected, even abandoned, personally, socially, economically and in so many other ways.
When my daughter Natalie had her first psychotic episode in late 2008, the last thing she or I needed during her crisis and first recovery was to be isolated. We needed people. We needed skilled doctors and mental health workers. We needed compassionate law enforcement officers and enlightened judges. We needed understanding neighbors and co-workers. We needed friends.
And we found them. We found them everywhere. We believed that a serious mental illness diagnosis was no more embarrassing than any other medical condition so we both talked about Natalie’s challenges openly and often. The happy result was that people talked back. They told us their own stories and introduced us to others who shared theirs and so on. We were far from alone.
We found a friend in the Treatment Advocacy Center, too. I came across the organization in one of my desperate scrambles to get Natalie help in a crisis. As the only organization dedicated to improving treatment access to people too ill to seek help for themselves, the organization fit the bill as being a friend indeed in a time of need.
Ultimately, I moved cross-country to turn my personal advocacy into professional advocacy as a member of the Treatment Advocacy Center team. Natalie eventually became involved, too, appearing on camera in our documentaries to talk about the importance of treatment. We both wrote numerous blogs like this one about living with serious mental illness and connected with even more people in the process.
Though I will continue writing and speaking about mental health issues, this is my last message as a staff member. At the end of the month, I return to the life of personal advocacy that led me here in the first place.
In my seven years and three roles with the organization, I have watched the mental health world change exponentially. I have seen first-episode psychosis resources mushroom, and research funding for brain disease grow. I have watched movie stars and sports celebrities come out about their own mental health conditions, making it harder to stereotype and stigmatize psychiatric diseases. I have witnessed lawmakers and thought leaders who once ignored, rejected or even abandoned serious mental illness come around to be dedicated advocates for more and better treatment. I have observed factions that once battled one another over their differences come together as allies for their shared goals.
It is still far from a perfect world. Too many people with mental illness remains in jails or on the streets instead of in treatment and recovery. We continue to need better laws and a more complete continuum of psychiatric care, including acute-care beds and other residential beds. We still need to know more about the causes and effective treatments for serious mental illness so we save more people like Natalie, who lost her battle with psychiatric disease and died by suicide.
But never have those of us who live and work with serious mental illness had more people pulling with and for us. That makes all the difference, both personally and collectively.
Until we meet again.
by Doris Fuller
