
SPARK attended the last 3 days of the Mental Health America 2024 Conference this month. The conference was not specifically peer related but there was a good amount of peer representation as well as clinical.
The 3 days of the conference we attended were incredible. There was a significant amount of youth representation and there were a lot of panels and presentations run by younger presenters which was especially nice to see.
Of the two days SPARK did not attend, the first day was for legislators and the second for MHA affiliates.
(Quick side note. After this conference, Carolyn is determined to become an affiliate of MHA. At present, there is not a single MHA affiliate from Washington State.)
Day 1
On our first day, Shroeder Striblin, the current president and CEO of Mental Health America introduced us to the new incoming president Pierluigi Mancini. Both Shroeder and Pierluigi were brimming with charisma and energy as they welcomed us all to the conference.


Schroeder Stribling Dr. Pierluigi Mancini
(Unfortunately, my photography skills are lacking and the quality of the photos are not great.)
Before getting into the day, Pierluigi shared news about the Mental Health America website, with the features it offers. They include:
Mental Health Test - There are different tests for various mental health conditions. The tests are anonymous and you can take them to see if you might need mental health support.
BIPOC Mental Health Toolkit - Practical resources and information, suggestions for changes and how to seek help for mental health challenges.
Supporting Young Minds - A section of their website focused on how to support our young persons including resources for youth, and resources for adults on how to support our youth population.
This is not all the website has to offer, so if you're interested, you should check it out.
After Pierluigi introduced himself and shared information about the MHA website, he introduced us to Reverend Cray, who along with her drummer Jackie Cook treated us to a spiritual and guiding warm-up for the conference.
Unfortunately, I was unable to catch up with them to take photos after the presentation (or confirm the spelling of their names)
Bridging Mental Health Gaps for Communities of Colour on The Family Van
Speakers: Piper Derenoncourt, Rainelle Walker-White, Dina Martinez
This was the first break-out session I attended.
The Family Van is a group of individuals who have been supporting their community in Boston since 1992.
They strive to provide support for people of color and are people who are members of the same community they support.
They spoke of the barriers that exist for people from communities of color. Some of the topics they covered were:
The language barrier - Focusing on strength, The Family Van spoke on the immediate cultural impact there is when an individual is being supported by a person who speaks their native language. They shared how it helps quickly build trust and pointed out that an interpreter adds a layer of separation between the peer being served and the one providing support.
The Family Van also spoke about the barrier of undocumented status. Individuals who are not legally residing in the US will avoid seeking care when they need it through fear of repercussions for their undocumented status.
Barriers related to religion were also covered. The religious faith of non-white individuals often stops people from seeking help due to the belief that God heals.
Stigma was another barrier that was discussed. Despite the progress made in lessening the stigma of mental or behavioral health, it is still a significant driving factor in non-white individual's hesitance to even accept that there is a struggle, let alone seek help for it.
Another barrier discussed was the normalization of suffering. They shared how they focus on encouraging people that it is okay to not be okay.
The Family Van also shared the programs that they offer to the community they serve. These different programs are offered based on the needs of the individual.
These programs are:
Problem Management Plus - A program of 5 sessions that is designed to be provided by non-specialists (We would call them CPC's/CPSS's in Washington State). It is a program designed to expand an individual's access to services and improve well-being.
Healthy Roads - A program that is designed to be tailored to an individual's needs. Those needs can be anything from nutritional advice to mental health support.
I will say that what The Family Van are doing is what we in Washington State are doing with our Certified Peer Support Specialist positions.
Instead of a state certification program, The Family Van is financially supported by several different funders.
You can check out their website. Click Here
Equalizing the Accessibility of Grants and Financing for Youth-Led Mental Health Initiatives
Speakers: Aliza Lopez (Medicine Encompassed), Arthy Suresh (Mind Body Ambassador Club)
This break-out session brought to light the struggles that youth-led organizations have in successfully applying for grants and how grants could benefit start up organizations beyond just the funds they can bestow.
Aliza and Arthy brought attention to the fact that there is a lot of money available, but that applying for grants has become inaccessible due to the extensive writing process along with the technical and impact evidence required by grant funders. Rural, remote and under privileged founders also find themselves struggling to access grant funding.
They spoke of how the grant funding process tends to skew towards established or large organizations who already have an extensive presence in the behavioral health community.
Of the non-monetary benefits they mentioned, Aliza and Arthy spoke of how grants can increase the visibility of a smaller and/or newer organization, and how the awarding of grants build recognition.
They pitched a request for there to be $100,000 a year available that youth-led organizations could apply for.
Keynote: Patrick J Kennedy and Philomena Kebec
After the breakout session, we all returned to the main room where Patrick J Kennedy and Philomena Kebec spoke of their experiences and concerns regarding mental health services.
Patrick Kennedy, a former US representative and lead author on the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. This act requires insurers to cover treatment for mental health and substance use the same way it does illnesses of the body like diabetes or cancer.
Philomena Kebec is a part of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. She is the Economic Development Coordinator and works on harm reduction, healthcare organization, small business, access to capital and traditional food systems. She is an attorney and represents native American clients and Tribal Nations. She has also been named the Pro Bono Attorney of the Year by the Wisconsin Bar Association.
During the presentation, Patrick Kennedy spoke of how other representatives of the US had family members, or were themselves in recovery from behavioral health struggles. He shared that he was part of a 12 step program, a program that also had generals and members of congress in. They spoke of their experiences and struggles with recovery. He emphasised the need to shed shame and remove stigma and that we need to be vulnerable and speak the entire truth to make real change.
Philomena brought awareness to the struggle of the native community when it comes to behavioural health support. She shared that the MAT services that are available to the public are too far away for native communities to take advantage of them. She also spoke of the need to address the disproportionate loss of native life regarding behavioral health, the lack of support available for indigenous individuals, and the prevelance of violence against native women.
Clifford W Beers Award

Renee Jones was the recipient of the Clifford W Beers Award!
Renee Jones is a survivor of trafficking and addiction. She is a survivor advocate, speaker and holds as Master's degree in mental health counseling.
She holds leadership roles on the Community Health Activation Team and Alcohol, Drug Addiction, and Mental Health Services Board in Cleveland. She chairs the Pasco County Commission on Human Trafficking, and is a member of the Mental Health Board in Hernando County, Florida. She is also the founder of Reconnection to Life Inc. Women's Center in Birmingham Alabama. The organization supports women re-entering society after incarceration.
She is also CEO of I Speak Hope, established by her, and she provides counseling services through her company In Community Counseling LLC.
During her acceptance speech, Renee spoke about how she spoke up, and now she will never stop speaking up when she needs to do so.
Day 2
The Me2/ Orchestra: Every Moment Matters
The Me2/ Orchestra is the only classical music organization that is created for people with mental health struggles and those who support them. Their website states "No Auditions. No Fees. No Stigma".
As we ate breakfast, we were treated to some of their great music.
Neurocrine Biosciences
Following the performance by the Me2/ Orchestra, there was a panel that spoke of the impact of living with a mental health condition and a condition called tardive dyskinesia. This disorder causes involuntary movement and is associated with the use of antipsychotics.
The two speakers were
Jeff - Patient Ambassador and Advocate for TD Awareness
Pratrick - A Patient Advocate for TD Awareness and Vice President of Peer Services for Firsthand Health.
The panel was sponsored by Neurocrine Biosciences, an organization focused on supporting people with conditions that have no current viable treatments.
During the panel the two gentlemen spoke about the effects TD had on their lives, their struggles with stigma and fighting the self-consciousness of living with the condition.
Mental Health America's Young Mental Health Leaders Panel, and mPower Award Presentation
Following the panel on tardive dyskinesia, the next was the young mental health leaders panel. This panel was moderated by Kelly Davis, and the presenters were Makaila Davis, founder of Angels Protection inc, Anastasia Erley, Swarthmore College student, Jonathan JeanCharles, University of Miami student, and Kaiser Perry, student at Amherst College.
During the presentation, the 4 panelists spoke about the importance of addressing mental health struggles on a peer level. They alluded to the struggles of safety at school, representation in the medical field, and behavioral health field, and distigmatization of mental health.
They also spoke of the importance of intergenerational support, and having conversations about both youth struggles and the struggles of the generations before and how they managed.
They pointed out the usefulness of mentors to help create supportive non-profit services. They spoke of wanting to see safe spaces developed for youth to share their concerns and struggles, and asked the older generations to find ways to engage with youth.
Following this panel, the mPower Award was bestowed on Ernesto Isaac Lara.
Ernesto is a wellbeing activist, lived experience researcher and peer support advocate. He is a researcher assistant at the Mental Health of All Lab at Harvard Medical School. He is focused on expanding access to peer support and enhancing his knowledge of decolonial models of community healing.
As he accepted his award, Ernesto spoke on how the youth are already doing peer support because they've identified it as a need and have founded services themselves in order to answer that need.
Media Awards Presentation
After lunch, it was the Media Awards Presentation which was presented by NBC actor Teddy Sears. The awardees were:
Hawaii News Now: Hope for Hawaii Island
The Hawaii News Now shines light on the growing need for mental health services in Hawaii's most rural communities
I Need To Ask You Something
Presented by Lemonada Media, I Need to Ask You Something is a unique 10-part series that bridges the gap between the things we nee to say, and the words we're afraid to hear.
Mindsite News
The only national journalism organization dedicated to reporting on mental health in America. They expose policy failures and spotlight efforts to solve them.
The Awakenings Review
Committed to publishing works by artists, poets, and writers who have a relationship to mental health struggles. They are established at the University of Chicago in 2000.
They are a means to self-expression, hope and healing and they champion and showcase poets and writers in their twice-annual print journals
In Her Shoes
Here, incarcerated women reflect on their lives through the shoes they have worn.
While they confront their stories and share them, they find confidence and courage to envision a greater future for themselves
Gen Z's Battle to be Mentally Healthy in the Age of Social Media
Speakers: Keegan Lee, Dr. Bilal Ghandour
Following the Media Awards Presentation, I attended a breakout session presented by Keegan Lee, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Bilal Ghandour, Ph. D, Elon University.
The two spoke of how they got connected after Keegan reached out to Dr. Ghandour about disconnecting from social media to see what effect it would have.
They began the presentation to point out that they were not advocating complete abstinence from social media, but finding a middle ground on identifying the positives and drawbacks.
The presentation walked through the stages of change and Keegan shared her thoughts and the feeling she experienced when contemplating and then undertaking that change. She talked about the near-automatic need to check her phone's notification upon seeing the device and on feeling withdrawal symptoms as a result of cutting herself off from social media. She shared how those symptoms lessened after 2 weeks and how she became okay with boredom or found ways to avoid it that did not involve her phone. She concluded her experiment after 2 months and rejoined social media, but with a more conscious awareness of its attraction.
As Keegan talked us through her experience, Dr. Ghandour periodically explained things from a psychological standpoint. He spoke of how habit reinforcement is powerfully influenced by the sense of anticipation and covered the difficulties involved in making real change. He stated that if someone wishes to make a change, they must consciously overcome the desire to return to old habits.
He explained how changing became the most difficult just before the period that the one changing would begin to start feeling a sense of victory, and that it was at that point that most attempts to change failed.
He spoke of how digital interactions are ultimately unfulfilling and that humans simply have not evolved to find connection through screens or digital media.
When addressing social media addiction, Dr Ghandour encouraged us to look at it like an eating disorder. When seeking to recover from an eating disorder, the individual does not stop eating altogether, instead they learn to manage what and how much they eat. He suggested that disconnecting completely is not necessarily the answer, but being aware of needs and behavior can allow for a healthier relationship with social media.
Day 3
Keynote: Dr. Nzinga Harrison
Co-founder and chief medical officer at Eleanor Health
Dr Harrison's presentation was very engaging and she was filled with incredible energy. She spoke of how health goes beyond the absence of symptoms, and how supporters should focus on the whole person, and what is going on in their lives.
She spoke of how no one can define the definition of healthy for another person.
Using the biopsychosocial model, Dr Harrison spoke of understanding the need to consider all parts of a person and the influences in their lives.
She stated that 40-60% of addiction risk is encoded into an individual's DNA, and that 40-60% of addiction risk is psychological. She spoke of how asthma is the most likely condition to be inherited through genetics, and addiction is the second most likely, above hypertension and diabetes.
She reframed the understanding of relapses, that illness relapses, not the person. She encouraged us all to look again at recommendations. If so many people are failing to follow recommendations then it's not the people that are the problem, but the recommendation itself.
Dr Harrison's presentation then moved on to information regarding Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) and how they are invaluable in countering the negative effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).
Lift the Mask: A Student-Led Approach to Normalizing and Improving Mental Health on College Campuses
Speakers: Emily A Abbot (Assistant Director of Development The Quell Foundation), Ashley Panzino (Nova Southeastern University - Lift The Mask Club President) , Allie Rosenberg (Development Intern of Quell Foundation)
The presentation opened up discussing the age when the onset of mental health struggles begin. They then spoke on the struggle young adults go through as they transition from high school to college and how those with mental health conditions find those conditions compounded by that transition.
The presenters spoke on the loneliness that comes with moving to college, even when surrounded by friends as they have often left their families behind, and most of their established social circle. Allie shared her experience of moving from a highschool where she had an excellent relationship with her school counselor to a new place where she no longer had the person she had grown to trust and rely on for support.
The panelists drew attention to the fact that there was an increase of 50% of the number of students who experienced mental health struggles in 2021(60%) than in 2013 (40%) and spoke about how social media can inspire feelings of falling behind when so many seem to be showing off how well they're doing.
They spoke of how many students feel that admitting to mental health struggles will be held against them later on. They brought attention to how demand for mental health is increasing faster (5%) than there are graduates becoming qualified (1%) and that 60% of professional are 55 years old or older.
The three presenters then spoke of the Lift the Mask Club, which is trying to address these needs by creating communities of support, and facilitating events, discussions and education. They told of how the LTMC helps promote local resources ,and works to lift the stigma of seeking out help. They also try to educate professors who might not believe in mental health as a service or struggle.
They are developing a network across multiple universities and plan to grow as far as they can, tailoring the club to the individual trending needs of the specific campus.
Closing Keynote: Dr. Lisa Miller, Professor & Founder at Spirituality Mind Body Institute
For the final keynote, Amy Robbins (Clinical Psychologist, Director of Mental Health at BIAN) came to the stage to introduce Dr. Lisa Miller. As she begun her introduction, Amy share a spiritual experience she had of her deceased aunt, which finally settled a chronic anxiety she had felt since the death of that aunt. Amy shared how much she appreciated the encouragement of spirituality, Dr Miller promotes.
Dr Miller's presentation spoke of everyone being born with a spiritual connection to life. She showed that spirituality and religion light up the same area of the brain as love of family and friends and shared that any method of spirituality builds resistence to substance use disorder, depression, risk taking, and suicidality.
Dr Miller spoke on the flawed 20th century belief that depression and anxiety have places in the brain but spirituality did not. She stated that spirituality has a place in the brain and comes out in religious faith, personal faith and in the sense of belonging.
She discussed the importance of believing and supporting a person's spiritual experience, treating it and accepting it as real.
Dr Miller's keynote was the last of the presentations. After that, the conference was rounded off with a thank you and farewell, but there was one more thing that was covered at the conference, and that was Mental Health America's Bell of Hope, the story of which deserves to be given attention, so here it is, taken from the website.
The Bell of Hope
During the early days of mental health treatment, asylums often restrained people who had mental illnesses with iron chains and shackles around their ankles and wrists. With better understanding and treatments, this cruel practice eventually stopped.
In the early 1950s, Mental Health America issued a call to asylums across the country for their discarded chains and shackles. On April 13, 1953, at the McShane Bell Foundry in Baltimore, Md., Mental Health America melted down these inhumane bindings and recast them into a sign of hope: the Mental Health Bell "Bell of Hope".
Now the symbol of Mental Health America, the 300-pound Bell serves as a powerful reminder that the invisible chains of misunderstanding and discrimination continue to bind people with mental illnesses. Today, the Mental Health Bell "Bell of Hope" rings out hope for improving mental health and achieving victory over mental illnesses.
Over the years, national mental health leaders and other prominent individuals have rung the Bell to mark the continued progress in the fight for victory over mental illnesses.