Foundation Awards Grants to Promote Recognition, Treatment of Mental Illness

Anxiety Disorders Association of America received $62,550 for its project Campus Faces, which partners with campus health centers and sororities to increase awareness of anxiety disorders among young women. The project teaches women that anxiety disorders are real, serious, and treatable and that help is available. Messages are being disseminated through partnership networks, public service announcements, news stories, postcards, and a Web site.

Central Massachusetts Area Health Education Center Inc. was granted $20,000 to launch a mental health outreach and education initiative targeting the Latino community in Worcester, Mass. Through educational workshops and ads in local Spanish-language media, the initiative is intended to raise awareness of mental illnesses, enhance early detection efforts, combat stigma, and teach people to navigate the local mental health system. All educational activities are conducted in Spanish.

Freedom From Fear of Staten Island, N.Y., received $5,000 to produce a series of six half-hour television shows focused on adolescent mental health issues. The series seeks to uncover how teens think and feel about the issues they encounter in daily life and educate them about mental health topics such as peer pressure, eating disorders, and depression. Teen volunteers serve as actors, set designers, stagehands, directors, and camera operators. Parents, teachers, and counselors are being encouraged to watch through a public awareness campaign that's being conducted in the community.

Friends of the Library Inc. of the Kenai Community Library, which serves the Central Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, received $5,000 to build a core collection of mental health resources to provide support for community programs that educate the public about mental illnesses. In addition, the library is implementing a mental health resources Web page that is linked to the library's main Web site to allow patrons to access accurate mental health information from their homes and offices. Library staff plan to conduct monthly Internet training sessions to introduce community members to the online resources.

Mental Health Association of South Central Kansas received $27,417 for its I.C. Hope—Don't Duck Mental Health Campaign. This campaign teaches children that mental health is as important as physical health. The campaign features a sixfoot duck mascot named I.C. Hope, who visits community organizations, schools, and events in Sedgwick County, Kan., to teach children that mental illnesses are real and treatable. In addition, the campaign utilizes a hand puppet, a Web site, and written materials for both children and parents.

Merced Lao Family Community Inc. was awarded a two-year grant of $48,389 for outreach to the Southeast Asian community in Merced County, Calif. The organization will conduct workshops for community leaders and clan leaders and elders to expand their knowledge of mental health issues and services so that they can pass the information to their clans. Talk show segments and public service announcements in Southeast Asian languages also will be aired on a local cable TV station, and mental health referral services will be provided.

Montgomery County Emergency Service Inc. was awarded a two-year grant of $51,030 to provide on-site mental health and crisis intervention training for 30 small police departments in Montgomery County, Pa. The goal of the training is to help police officers understand mental illnesses, recognize possible warning signs, and safely intervene. In the second year of the grant, the program will develop a replicable training model that other organizations can use to educate small police departments.

Pine Belt Mental Healthcare Resources was granted $55,835 for a multimedia public awareness campaign that educates employers and consumers about mental illnesses in nine counties in southern Mississippi. The campaign includes print ads, television commercials, and fact sheets that dispel myths about the employment of people with mental illness. The primary goal of the program is to increase the employment level of consumers with mental illness in these counties.