Mental Illness Awareness Week
October 7 - 13, 2007
Mental Illness Awareness Week (MIAW) is sponsored by NAMI—National Alliance on Mental Illness and is an annual, national observance that was created by a Presidential proclamation in 1990 to focus attention on the high incidence of mental illness in America.

Over the past 18 years, MIAW has become a tradition in the NAMI grassroots. It presents an opportunity for all three levels of NAMI—national, state, and local—to work together in communities across the country in meeting the NAMI mission through a variety of outreach, educational, and advocacy efforts. While we have taken many steps forward, we still have much to do to end the stigma towards serious mental illness.

Our 2007 MIAW theme, Building Community, Taking Action, builds on last year's charge for NAMI members to continue to take action against stigma, building community collaborations to confront injustice, and educate our policymakers and members of our community to create service systems that provide hope and recovery to people living with serious mental illness.

A schedule of the times and locations a Nami representative will be on the JSU campus during MIAW to distribute information and outreach material is listed below.

• Monday, October 8
  
  • Wallace Hall - Main Lobby
    9:00 - 11:00 a.m.
    
  • Ayers Hall - Basement
    1:30 - 3:30 p.m.
    
  • Ramona Wood - 3rd Floor
    4:00 - 4:45 p.m.
  
  
• Tuesday, October 9
  
  • Montgomery Building-TMB - 4th Floor
    9:00 - 11:00 a.m.
    
  • Montgomery Building-TMB - 2nd Floor
    12:00 Noon - 2:00 p.m.
  
  
• Wednesday, October 10
  
  • Brewer Hall - Main Lobby
    9:00 - 11:00 a.m.
    
  • Brewer Hall - 3rd Floor
    1:30 - 3:30 p.m.

Tuesday, October 9, the local NAMI chapter will be observing the National Day of Prayer for Mental Illness Recovery and Understanding. NAMI invites others to take a moment of silence to remember this day. Pray for those individuals and their families who seek treatments that work to restore mental wellness; mental health care providers and researchers in their provision of quality care; the destitute, imprisoned and homeless in our communities; the interconnectedness of mind, body and spirit for our health; and a renewed sense of vision, hope and possibility for the future.

For more information about NAMI visit their Website at NAMI. For more information about the JSU Chapter of NAMI, contact D'Angelo Smith, chapter president, at jsu4169m@jsu.edu.

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