Learn about APA Alliance’s Many Initiatives and Join

How familiar are you with the APA Alliance?

For 28 years, it has undertaken initiatives that benefit mentally ill individuals or that promote good mental health.

One of them has been the “When Not to Keep a Secret” essay contest, which was created to make high school students more aware of the importance of going to adults for help when they suspect that a friend might be suicidal. High schools in several states have participated in the contest over the years. And as APA Alliance member Alicia Muñoz told Psychiatric News a few years ago, the contest “is being used as a component of an overall primary violence prevention strategy in the high schools…. [It also] brings an additional opportunity for the psychiatric community to interface with the school community and with allied groups to promote mental health education and illness prevention.”

The Alliance also runs advocacy training workshops to help its members gain skills so they can be more effective at advocating with legislators when bills related to mental health issues are at stake. It contributes to the mentoring of young career psychiatrists and their families. It works closely with other groups, such as the Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and the AMA Alliance. It provides Elsa Barton Scholarships for a spouse, partner, or dependent of a disabled, impaired, or deceased physician.

Alliance members include spouses or partners of APA members as well as other individuals sponsored by an APA Alliance or APA member. The Alliance will be maintaining a booth at APA’s 2012 annual meeting on the Arch Street Concourse, Level 1, of the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

More information about the Alliance is posted at www.apaalliance.org or available from Angela Poblocki, executive secretary of the Alliance, at [email protected].