Mental Health America award recipients

MHA’s Innovation in Programming Award, which recognizes the continuing innovation and creativity of the MHA affiliate network in program development and implementation, goes to MHA of Greater Dallas and its Mind Your Garden program. When we think of parks, we think of places for people to commune and connect with nature, but they also provide places for people to have fun, and find mental, physical, and spiritual health, and social wellbeing. Parks and green spaces help restore people from the stress of day-to-day challenges, hassles and struggles.The Mind Your Garden program was created as a community movement to promote the relationship between mental health and the environment. In partnership with Texas A&M Forest Services, and The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, MHA of Greater Dallas created an opportunity for the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex to develop healthy coping skills while utilizing nature within an urban setting. Through this program, they provide the community with needed resources to achieve overall mental health. With the current state of the world, the program is designed to help consumers by creating a relationship with nature and by making mental health a priority. This initiative ensures that people have access to parks and green spaces lower their stress, depression, and increase their overall quality of life and resiliency against developing mental illness.

Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, the pioneering television show that has been reaching and teaching children since 1969. Today, Sesame Workshop is an innovative force for change, with a mission to help kids everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder. Sesame is present in more than 150 countries, providing almost two hundred million children with access to life-changing early education, critical health lessons, and helpful tools to build resilience from tough situations. Their Social Impacts Initiatives educate people worldwide about a host of issues that impact children’s mental health, including traumatic experiences, autism, gender equality, and helping military children and families thrive when parents are deployed. Most recently, Sesame has created content to help children and families deal with the uncertainty of COVID-19 and teamed up with CNN to discuss racism, trauma and how families can build empathy and embrace diversity.

WSOC-TV (Charlotte), led by Executive Kim Holt and anchor Erica Bryant, committed to telling the community impact of mental illness across its 22-county viewing area. The station developed an hour-long prime time television special focused on mental health entitled “Charlotte’s Hidden Crisis.” The live broadcast featured pre-recorded vignettes featuring individuals and families discussing what it’s like to live with a mental health diagnosis, suicide attempts and loss, and the challenge associated with seeking mental health services. The station also developed a printed and online resource guide that featured mental health resources. To ensure that viewers connected to these services, the station hosted a live phone bank that was staffed by local mental health advocates and clinicians. Call bank volunteers answered over 700 calls from Spanish and English-speaking callers on the day of the broadcast. The station also began working on a second Charlotte’s Hidden Crisis live broadcast for December 2019. This live broadcast focused on veteran’s mental health, normalizing therapy, social media and mental health, the stigma of medication, and the signs of suicide. WSOC-TV made a commitment to use appropriate non-stigmatizing language and accurate data when reporting on deaths by suicide and mental health overall. They continue to be advocates for using their influence to educate their viewers about mental health and wellness.

MHA’s George Goodman Brudney and Ruth P. Brudney Social Work Award recognizes significant contributions made to the care and treatment of people living with mental illnesses by practicing professionals in the field of social work. The 2021 award was presented to Elliot Pinsly.

Elliot is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the President & CEO of the Behavioral Health Foundation, an independent, data-driven, nonprofit policy center in Tennessee. He is an energetic and passionate leader in mental health policy and strategic advocacy and is committed to improving access to high-quality care, reducing stigma, decriminalizing mental health, and driving systems change. He works hand-in-hand with fellow social workers, behavioral health providers, judges, advocacy organizations, state officials, and concerned citizens to create meaningful mental health policy changes. The relationships Elliot has developed with statewide police and sheriff associations have also proved critical in securing funding for criminal justice reform and mental health decriminalization initiatives.

MHA’s 2021 Media Award recognizes television shows, journalists, and filmmakers that tackle the issues of mental illness and addiction – and in doing so, educate, inform, and break down stigma around these issues.

Netflix Original Series Ginny & Georgia received the 2021 Media Award for responsibly approaching the issue of self-harm and portraying excellent peer-to-peer conversations about mental health. Showrunner and Executive Producer Debra J. Fisher and Creator and Executive Producer Sarah Lampert will accept on behalf of the show.

MHA’s 2021 Clifford W. Beers Award was presented to mental health advocate and executive Keris Myrick. The Clifford W. Beers Award is MHA’s highest honor and is presented annually to an individual with lived experience who best reflects the example set by MHA founder Clifford W. Beers in efforts to improve conditions for, and attitudes toward, people living with mental health conditions.

Keris Myrick is a leading mental health advocate and executive and currently a co-Director of S2i, the Mental Health Strategic Impact Initiative. S2i is an organization that seeks to advance transformation in mental health for all through policy reform. Prior to her role at S2i, she was Chief of Peer and Allied Health Professions for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health and served as the Director of the Office of Consumer Affairs for the Center for Mental Health Services at SAMHSA. She is also a past Board President of NAMI, and the former CEO of Project Return Peer Support Network, a Los Angeles-based peer-run nonprofit. In 2006, after working in higher education for much of her life, she changed her career path. Her lived experience with schizoaffective disorder led her to begin attending publicly available mental health conferences. And through people she met at these gatherings, she took her first job in the mental health nonprofit field. Her accomplishments since then amount to 15 years of experience in mental health services innovations, transformation, and peer workforce development.

MHA’s Joseph de Raismes, III Policy Award is a newly established award, created to honor the service and legacy of Joseph de Raismes, III who worked on the MHA Board of Directors, gave advice as MHA General Counsel, and provided leadership on the MHA Public Policy Committee. Each year going forward, the Joseph de Raismes, III Policy Award will honor an individual who – like Joe – makes outstanding contributions to furthering mental health policy.

The inaugural recipient was Mark Heyrman.

Mark is MHA’s current General Counsel and a national policy expert whose expertise is greatly in demand, especially with respect to mental health law. He has authored ten scholarly publications and has worked on over 40 pieces of legislation related to mental health. He was previously a clinical Professor of Law where his work was dedicated to representing people living with mental illnesses in state and federal courts, drafting and working to enact mental health legislation, and teaching law students mental health law and mental health advocacy.

MHA’s 2021 Betty Humphrey Equity Champion Award went to Mental Health America of the MidSouth. The award was created in honor of Dr. Betty Humphrey, a tireless advocate for culturally competent mental health care. The award is given to an individual or organization for demonstrating an ongoing commitment to the fight for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It recognizes those who advance the intersectionality of mental health as it relates to discrimination, poverty, stigma, racism, and overall social and economic determinants of health.

Mental Health America of the MidSouth established a Multicultural Outreach Program (MOP) over 20 years ago. The program started by providing mental health education and programs in Spanish. It later expanded to offer support in Somali, Kurdish, and other languages. Going even further, MHA of the MidSouth also developed two new curriculums: one to train interpreters in mental health and another to teach providers to work with interpreters in order to provide appropriate mental health services. Today, it is one of the only programs in the southern part of the U.S. that provides regular mental health programs for non-English speakers. And recently, three new programs were added — one that helps foreign-born nationals recover from human trafficking, one that assists in case management for unaccompanied minors, and one that hosts a monthly gathering of Nashville leaders in order to promote culturally responsive mental health services throughout Middle Tennessee.

MHA’s Innovation in Programming Award, which recognizes the continuing innovation and creativity of an MHA affiliate in program development and implementation, goes to Mental Health Connecticut (MHC). MHC is part of a statewide network to help eliminate homelessness in Connecticut and participates in the Waterbury/Litchfield Coordinated Access Network (CAN) that serves those who meet the HUD definition of literal homelessness. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, MHC and the Connecticut Department of Housing recognized an urgent community need to connect people experiencing homelessness to housing services. MHC worked with the Department of Housing and others to create a “call tree” that routed incoming calls directly to a live staff member within the Waterbury/Litchfield Coordinated Access Network. This innovation made the Waterbury/Litchfield Coordinated Access Network the only community program in the state of Connecticut with same-day call-back services in order to address an individual’s housing crisis immediately. Mental Health Connecticut is currently working to assist sister agencies across the state in replicating the program.

MHA’s 2021 mPower Award was presented to Seika Brown. The mPower Award celebrates the life and work of a teen or young adult who speaks out about mental health issues to educate his or her peers and fight stigma.

Seika Brown is a 19-year-old researcher, author, and student advocate for mental health. She is the founder and CEO of YLG Research; an initiative that aims to discover how mental health is defined globally. In the past, Brown co-founded and ran “Archnova”, a youth organization that worked on mental health policy change, where they passed a bill in Washington State. She currently works alongside citesRISE and their Seattle Youth Leader Network, and is also a recipient of their youth challenge award.