Racine County's National National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter aids and advocates for people with mental health through their support hotlines, meeting groups and other resources.

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According to a 2023 Gallup poll, depression among adult men reached a 29 percent high, a 10 percent increase from 2015. More concerning in 2021, 91 percent of 18-21-year-olds (known as Gen Z) experienced a physical or emotional symptom of mental stress compared to 74 percent of adults.

Many social service and healthcare organizations are struggling. Advocacy for mental health resources and opposition to mental illness stigmatization is vital. Racine County's National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter aids and advocates for people with mental health through their support hotlines, meeting groups and other resources. They have also partnered with the LGBT Center of Southeast Wisconsin and the Racine Public Library to offer outreach programs such as the monthly Teen Talk.

Describe how you became a part of this organization.

Pat Bohon: I became part of the organization because my mother was one of the founders of the local affiliate. I became involved early in the formation of the organization and have remained involved since then, taking on different roles depending on the year. I became involved because I became concerned about a sibling who was living with mental illness.

Bridget Munson: When I was a teenager, a friend of mine joined a NAMI walk in New Hampshire and I participated to help raise money. Years later, I found my life In Wisconsin and saw an opportunity to work in a new capacity with NAMI, in the marketing and development side of things so I joined NAMI Waukesha, now known as NAMI Southeast Wisconsin. I'm also a family member who has been touched by mental illness in many ways. I was introduced to the group many years ago and have found ways to stay involved eighteen years later.

How do you combine activism and group therapy in your organization?

Bohon: I'll talk about the activism portion. We are citizen advocates who advocate for having adequate services for people with mental illness and we're active at all different levels of government. We're also activists in that we look to educate the broader community about the realities of mental illness, the needs of people with mental illness, and how society can meet those needs effectively. Those are a couple of areas we're involved with in terms of public education and advocacy.

Munson: One of the pillars of NAMI is support programming. We offer advocacy, education, support, and public awareness programming. As it relates to support groups and activism, our goal with providing support groups is to let people know they're not alone, to make sure people have a network that can help them navigate their own challenges and celebrate their own successes. With that, we empower people to support others, so that's how I see those two connecting.

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Bohon: Our overarching mission is to make sure all people affected by mental illness know they're not alone whether they have direct lived experience, they're a family member, or a mental health professional. We have also been trying to meet people where they are when we share our information whether that's through starting a podcast series or providing training programs for law enforcement. We're advocating for continued improvements in the mental health system and making sure people who need services receive them in a timely manner.

What is a common misconception about mental health that people still have?

Munson: A common misconception people hold about mental health concerns is that you can't have a healthy life if you have a diagnosis or symptoms even without a diagnosis and you can. There are treatments that work, there are groups like NAMI that support people, there's education, and there's a renewed priority to learn about mental health in our community. I think in the future, we'll see more improvements for people who are impacted by mental illness and mental health conditions.

Bohon: To echo Bridget's comments, I think a misunderstanding is that recovery is possible or probable. While people can access the services that are available, there's still room for us to expand and grow those services. We still have work to do to eliminate the stigma associated with mental illness which can be a roadblock to people seeking help when they need it, but looking at a 40-year time period, we're making progress in those areas.

What changes have you seen in your lifetime about how society addresses mental illness?

Munson: The biggest change I've seen in my lifetime is people are willing to talk about it. They are willing to say they don't feel well that day or in general. The stigma is being reduced: we're able to talk about it now and have conversations amongst our friends or family, even at work. That's one of the things that our programs do, they reduce stigma in a workplace environment so people can get the support they need. People are able to talk about it now, more than they were years ago. Some of the work that we do now is in middle schools and high schools with the "NAMI Ending the Silence" program. We go in school classrooms with a 50-minute program that explains the early warning signs of mental illness along with where to go and what to do if you or a friend needs help. I've noticed with the feedback from that program how a lot of younger people are comfortable with talking about it and asking for help from their teachers or parents. Now it's up to us as older generations to respond accordingly and ensure they get that help.

Bohon: In the last decade, there's been much enlightenment and openness to discussing mental illness. Stigma and discrimination still exist but conditions have definitely improved. For instance, the 988 Crisis line is a result of societal acknowledgement that mental illness exists, and people need assistance. That's the major change I've noticed.

Has the past five to 10 years impacted your outreach or organizational strategy?

Bohon: In the past couple of years, we've been trying to meet people where they are. We offer people different opportunities to interact with our organization and we've been trying to extend our outreach in the workplace, schools and other institutions. The education and support NAMI offers can be beneficial. I think in the past five years or so, the paradigm changed for us. We're going to modernize our signature programs for 2025.

Munson: In the last 10 years, one of the most important things NAMI Racine County has done is grow our partnerships with local law enforcements. We work through a collaborative process with Racine County, the Sheriff's Department, and the Racine Police Department to form a crisis intervention team. The team provides 40-hour trainings to law enforcement which include mental illness overviews, in depth breakdowns of the realities of what they may experience, and we bring people with lived experiences into the presentations to share their stories of law enforcements interaction. There's also an officer wellness component to the program: suicide has increased for law enforcement officers, so we try to provide tools for people on the force to get the support they need. We use the acronym C.I.T. (Crisis Intervention Team) a lot, that's an international program that NAMI has adapted here locally and has had great support from our local enforcement.

Bohon: Bridget mentioned suicide prevention efforts. I think there's been much more open discussion and awareness of suicide along with the embrace of various initiatives to reduce suicide. I think that's developed over the last ten years as well

What was the impact of the Covid pandemic on NAMI?

Bohon: It was highly disruptive and especially affected in person programming opportunities. I think we're still recovering from that in terms of getting maximum in person participation at events, but that's improving. It also caused us to innovate and develop a number of other ways to engage in outreach in terms of the positives. Many people were trying to provide services and it exacerbated mental health concerns within the community at all different levels. It also exposed that we have a mental health crisis in this country and gives us an opportunity to make a positive change going forward.

Munson: As Pat said, it was very disruptive but there were also many silver linings that came with it. One of those was that we were really forced as a community to realize that mental illness needs to be focused on. It jumpstarted some of the initiatives that we needed to move forward on. With NAMI Racine County, we lost a lot of volunteers; there was a lot of participation in programs and because they couldn't be in person, people felt even more isolated. Having community support is important to their wellness journey and general wellbeing. I am grateful that it allowed us to be more authentic with ourselves; due to covid and work from home set ups, we were able to have conversations about work/ balance and were able to marry the realities of home life vs work life. This allowed employers to see what employees needed for their wellbeing and let people open up in new ways to coworkers or family.

What are the Racine organization's plans for the near future?

Munson: This past year, we were able to pilot a program called Project SMILE which stands for Stigma Free Mental Illness Leaders and Employers. We had the opportunity to work with Racine County and SC Johnson this year. The intention was to assess stigma in a workplace environment and create a workplace workshop that would improve the workplace experience for people with mental illness along with their family members. We're excited to explore how we're going to continue to offer the program in the next calendar year.

Bohon: We will be doing quarterly advocacy events such as panel presentations and we'll be focusing on different topics such as veteran's mental health. We'll continue to focus on the intersection of the criminal justice system and mental health. We're an advocacy organization, we advocate for public policy changes, so we'll be extensively involved in advocacy at the state and county levels, including an event that's sponsored by NAMI Wisconsin called Action on the Square. That's where a number of us will be visiting with our state legislative delegation in early March to discuss our priorities for the Wisconsin state budget as it relates to mental health.

Munson: We're continuing to offer support groups and encourage people to check those out. They're listed on our website (namiracinecounty.org) and support is essential for someone's wellness journey We'll be continuing to offer our educational programs, including the C.I.T. program and a sister program for anyone who might be a bystander to a mental health crisis called Crisis Intervention Partner, so our education and awareness events will continue to be a priority in the next year. We're excited about the work that we're doing with advocacy and with SMILE, those are two areas we are leaning into.