Various Updates: Labor Day Weekend Edition

Over the next couple weeks, Define Functioning will be rolling out a few changes. Some are organization (e.g., the Current Reading list has been moved to the Reading Room, where it probably makes more sense). Some will be more content-oriented, aiming for new and continually improving discussions. At the end of that process the “Beta” notice on the uppermost part of the right column will disappear. So, as I execute the tweaks I’ve gathered during the Beta stage, any and all suggestions you may have are more than welcome!

Last May, Define Functioning ran a little experiment and asked what you want people to know about mental health and mental illness. The results were amazing. So amazing, in fact, that it has presented a small conundrum for the book that will compile the responses: We are just in between a “put it in your pocket” sized book and a “put it in your bag” sized book. And as these things go, it’s not really an option to be “in between.” (It’s actually too big for a pocket-sized book…and looks silly as something bigger right now.)

So, I’ve concocted a way to fix that: I’m extending submissions through 2011 in order to have a book finished and ready for Mental Health Awareness Month (May) in 2012. I’ll be adding a new Project page to the site to collect submissions (part of the aforementioned changes). Until then, please feel free to add comments to the previous discussion post or email them to me at definefunctioning [at] gmail [dot] com.

Last thing: I’ve been unforgivably negligent when it comes to providing any sort of imagery with recent posts. So, in some super lazy brainstorm, I thought I’d screen clip whatever happened when I googled any given phrase. The Universe seemed to smile down on this plan, because when I did she offered this:

An Awareness Brainstorm

As I’m pretty sure everyone who participates in this forum is already very well aware, May is Mental Health Awareness Month in the US. I did a little googling to find out what that means to different people and organizations. [Apologies for that link. It’s really the most efficient way to share what I found.] Following my brief search, which included a severe sense of disappointment in the less-than-thorough Wikipedia entry, I had some questions about awareness, advocacy, priorities, and PR. This post is a brainstorming session, aimed at generating ideas.

Given that Mental Health Awareness Month lasts for exactly one month, given that we have eleven other months to plan for it, given the notoriously short American attention span, given the many issues that could be addressed, given a basic assumption of who may be listening to the messages put out there, given the many different media outlets for discussion, and given the many wildly inappropriate misconceptions about mental illness…

What message would you prioritize? What venue(s) would you use? What do you want people to know? Which audience(s) do you think you could effectively reach? These questions include several implications, including whether we’re talking generally about mental health or more specifically about mental illness and what we might mean by “awareness” and its relationship to “understanding,” “tolerance,” “acceptance,” “prejudice,” and “stigma.” These questions ask you to consider whether a grassroots approach, an institution-based campaign, or some combination of the two, is more effective. At their core, these questions ask about the nature of advocacy, about what one person could do, about what one small group (that’s us) might accomplish…in one month.

There are twenty-six more days in this month. That’s enough time to get people talking.

ADDENDUM: I wrote this then started doing a little more thinking. While we do a lot of discussing in terms of relating to one another’s experiences, we also sometimes talk about misconceptions, stigma, and advocacy. So, I’ve reached out to my network, done a little research and numbers crunching, and decided that — in a proactive stance on DF’s first Mental Health Awareness Month — Define Functioning is going into the book-making game. The first DF book will be finished (hopefully) by the end of this very month based (almost) entirely on the discussion on this post. The tentative/working title of the book is [insert number here] things we’d like you to know about mental illness. It will be a collection of short entries (1-3 sentences each). Anyone who contributes to the collection will be acknowledged by their screen name unless I’m told otherwise. If you’d rather your acknowledgement be addressed to another name or if you’d like to contribute via email, shoot me something at definefunctioning [at] gmail [dot] com. So, very seriously this time: What do you want people to know?