Friday, April 6, 2012

Fight Mental Illness Thursday - Kids' Crisis Services

NAMI Montana is excited to announce that the second Thursday of each month will be Fight Mental Illness Thursday. On Fight Mental Illness Thursday, we’re asking Montanans to make one phone call or email to support the fight against mental illness.

On Thursday April 12th, we’re asking as many Montanans as possible to call into Governor Schweitzer’s office or send them an electronic message asking Governor Schweitzer to develop a plan to increase access to mental health crisis services for Montana’s children. Suicide is a major problem in this state and we desperately need services for Montanans younger than 18 who are actively suicidal.

Please take a few minutes and make your voice heard by calling Governor Schweitzer at (406) 444-3111 or sending him an electronic message through this link http://governor.mt.gov/contact/commentsform.asp. Montana.

Please share this blog post on facebook, Twitter, by email, Google +, or whatever to help other support the fight against suicide in Montana. We can make a difference for families in need.


Answers to a few questions about this call-in (email-in):

First, what’s so important about this Thursday?

We’re starting Fight Mental Illness Thursdays on the second Thursday of each month as a way of making it very easy for people across Montana to make mental illness advocacy a part of their monthly routine. There will always be a need for phone trees and other ways of getting people involved for targeted calls for committee hearings, etc. But we’re trying this as a way of getting a larger amount of people involved as consistent voices in the fight against serious mental illness.

The lack of children’s mental health crisis services in this state is one of the most critical weaknesses in Montana’s mental illness treatment system. Our families of children in mental health crisis are desperate for some kind of help. The serious nature of that need, especially in relation to Montana’s consistently high suicide rates, led NAMI Montana to choose it as the topic of our first Fight Mental Illness Thursday.

Second, why have people call Governor Schweitzer’s office even though he’s term-limited out?

This is a great question. The next governor and Legislature will definitely have their collective ears bent on this issue after the election and throughout the legislative session. The question is what can we do to give these critical services the best chance possible of ending up in the next governor’s budget that is proposed to the Legislature.

The Governor just released a major plan for a long-term fix for the administrative pension program. We'd love to have his team apply a similar process to children's crisis services.

The worst that he can tell us is “no.” NAMI Montana thinks that it’s worth a shot. There’s too much at stake not to try.