It was such an honor to attend the All Rise: America 250 special event which commemorated 250 years of liberty, justice, and the rule of law. Walking into Osvaldo N. Soto Miami Dade Justice Center was exciting. Going through a security checkpoint, metal detector, then electronic security monitored elevator, was intimidating. Exiting the elevator to…
I had the opportunity to tune into a live panel titled From the Margins to the Mainstream: Mental Health Over the Last Decade, hosted by the Ruderman Family Foundation, bringing together voices from film, athletics, medicine, and advocacy for a conversation about mental health. As an intern at the Flawless Foundation and as a teenager,…
On Tuesday, June 16, the Miami-Dade County Commission approved the operating plan for the Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery, and the vote was unanimous. After twenty-two years, the doors are going to open. We are overjoyed, and we are thinking of our neighbors who will walk through them. In America, the largest providers…
By Dr. Robin Jones | Perspectives from the Frontlines | Published: June 16, 2026 Today, I sat inside the Commission Chamber at the Stephen P. Clark Center, in Miami, watching decades of relentless advocacy culminate in a single, unanimous voice of approval. It is a morning I will not soon forget. The energy inside the…
By Dr. Robin Jones Director of Strategy and Innovation, Flawless Foundation Energy, community, and wellness took center stage at the recent School District of Palm Beach County School Board Meeting. It was a night of immense pride for us as our incredible partners at Digital Vibez received well-deserved recognition for their phenomenal, transformative work with…
We Lost the Filmmaker. Let’s Not Forget His Cause. The mental health advocacy community has lost a quiet giant. Brian Lindstrom was a Portland, Oregon-based documentary filmmaker who devoted his career to telling the stories of people living with mental illnesses and the consequences of a judicial system that too often criminalizes them. He described…
Miami-Dade didn’t just join the movement to treat mental illness as health problems instead of crimes. It started it. Back in 1989, Miami-Dade opened the first drug court in the nation, betting on the idea that people struggling with substance use deserve treatment and accountability instead of a jail cell. That model has since spread…
Here’s What the Data Says… Mental health policy debates often focus on access and affordability. Those gaps are real, but they sit on top of something deeper: a system that has never treated brain health as a legitimate medical priority, and that has consistently failed the people most in need of it. Five fault lines…
Dr. Robin Jones In my professional life, I am accustomed to structure. I prepare, I plan, and I aim for specific therapeutic outcomes. But as any seasoned provider knows, the “room” often has its own agenda. During my recent wellness workshop at Mental Health America in West Palm Beach, I received a beautiful lesson in…
Help Instead of Jail for our Neighbors In the United States, jails and prisons have become the largest, de facto mental health providers. Facilities like New York’s Rikers Island, Los Angeles’ Twin Towers Jail, and Chicago’s Cook County Jail hold more patients with serious mental illness than any state hospital. Here in South Florida, the…
