Unlocking the Pieces: Community Mental Health in Northeast Florida
Dr. Laura Lane, Vice President and COO
“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” Bill Gates
Next Wednesday, JCCI launches Unlocking the Pieces: Community Mental Health in Northeast Florida, a three-year project. In December, the Florida Times-Union defined the urgency about community mental health and mentioned Unlocking the Pieces in an editorial.
This year, between February and May, volunteers will learn about the costs of mental illness, the system we have now for caring for people with brain disorders, and how everyone can maintain their mental health. The learning phase will include questions about the mind-body connection as well as the prevalence of mental disorders in our community. Did you know that 1 in 5 people in the U.S. experience a mental disorder in any given year? How will the Affordable Care Act will change the availability of therapists and psychiatrists? A fast pace of change in healthcare is shaping how we deal with mental health, too.
Learning about something is just the first step to changing it. In order to improve mental health for everyone, we must take steps appropriate for our community. As another editorial from last month’s Florida Time-Union notes, “Florida has one of the worst funding levels for mental health in the nation, and Duval County is last among metro areas….[and yet some say] that funding is not the most important mental health priority.” Besides funding, what about stigma? And what about the fact that healthcare usually separates the brain from the rest of the body? What do we work on first? Agreeing on which priorities come first is crucial to planning for community-wide improvements that everyone supports.
In the fall of this year, the committee will release a series of recommendations for improving mental health across Northeast Florida. That’s where you see the difference between this project and all the others. Unlike most reports and studies, JCCI volunteers devote two years to advocating for those recommendations. Like Bill Gates says, keep your eye on the long-term because that’s how real change happens over time.
Will you have a voice in the improvements about to happen in the next ten years? Come next Wednesday and you will.
[if !supportLists]· [endif]Date: Wednesday, February 12, 2014
[if !supportLists]· [endif]Time: 9:00am – 10:30am
[if !supportLists]· [endif]Location: JCCI, 100 Festival Park Ave., Jacksonville, FL 32202
Please RSVP so we prepare materials for you and others. Can’t make it? Keep up at the Unlocking the Pieces website.
