This blog also appears on the Huffington Post In any given year, one out of every five adults in the U.S. has an experience with a mental health disorder. The tenth leading cause of death for U.S. adults is suicide. For individuals ages 10-24, the second leading cause of death is suicide. But you wouldn’t…
Tonight, in celebration of the upcoming Halloween holiday, ABC will re-air a Modern Family episode, called “AwesomeLand.” This episode, which was shown for the first time last year, is anything but awesome — as the cast takes part in the creation of an “insane asylum”–themed haunted house filled with horribly offensive depictions of individuals with…
Tara and Jim just lost their dear friend Ellie to suicide. They didn’t know each other but were connected at the funeral through their friendship with Ellie and also through a shared diagnosis of bipolar disorder. In their grief, they have courageously brought light and healing to an unthinkable tragedy and they are mental health…
I recently had the inspiring experience of sitting down with Robin Stern, Ph.D., the associate director for the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, to discuss the upcoming Emotional Revolution Summit (ERS)– a game-changing effort between the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation. The ERS is a groundbreaking movement that…
I write with a broken heart as we once again stand together as a nation in the grief of a brutal shooting that stuns the world. Without a doubt, the events that transpired in Charleston, S.C. are tragic, and the premature loss of any life is something we collectively mourn. My heart and mind are…
If you were to compare making a change in the world to tossing a pebble into water, you would quickly see that alone, one single pebble makes a small splash with ripples that slowly fade. You would realize how difficult it is for one individual throwing pebble after pebble to ever make a big wave.…
It’s that time of year again. The universal reply date for colleges has just come and gone, so students are dealing with the aftermath of making a decision under a great deal of pressure. It would be nice to think that once the decision is made everything’s smooth sailing, but I am seeing evidence all…
People often ask me what my dream is in my work at The Flawless Foundation and my answer is always the same: a world where the cause of mental health is celebrated and where every person living with these challenges is embraced by society. And what is also always the same is the vibrant hope…
“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” – Martin Luther King Jr. (Nobel Lecture, The Quest for Peace & Justice – 1964) “How could he have done this?” is what everyone asks. It must be terrorism, one early article…
I don’t know how many people learn about the revolutionary Dorothea Dix in school any more, but for people involved with mental health advocacy, she is a shining light and one of the great women of history. It is poignant for me that I will be spending the last three days of Women’s History Month…
