5455M3J7

55-J-7-1

Over the past few years mental health illness and violence has been a highly talked about topic. After doing some research, it was concluded that a majority of the people that are affected by this reside in low-income countries where their access to resources are very limited (Collins et al., 2011). Through my research many of the policies that were spoken about included policies that included, gun reporting laws and gun laws around individuals with mental illness. One organization that spoke about these policies was the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). NAMI is a national alliance that has a mission that provides advocacy, education, support and public awareness so that all individuals and families affected by mental illness can build better lives (NAMI, 2019). What makes this particular organization successful is that they hold a high priority on education. NAMI offers education throughout thousands of communities across the United States through NAMI State organizations and NAMI Affiliates (NAMI, 2019). They look to ensure that communities and anyone in need is getting the right support and education that is needed.

Now, if I was to make recommendations to organizations and stakeholders. I would recommend that they look to make sure funds and resources are there. If the programs ever saw that they were running out of resources and funds I would look to policy holders to see if a budget can be put in place to make sure organizations like NAMI stay up and running. Having organizations like NAMI stay around and continue to provide vital information is highly important when looking to improve mental health illness and violence throughout countries. Without proper education, support and resources, this issue will continue to happen. But the only way to keep organizations like this running are through proper funding and support. One top way to have policy holders and organization runners understand the importance is to have individuals affected speak on how the program has helped them, families speak on how the programs have supported them and even organization leaders from programs like NAMI, speak on behalf of their statistics and what success rates are for them.

References

Collins, P. Y., Patel, V., Joestl, S. S., March, D., Insel, T. R., & Daar, A. S. (2011). Grand challenges in global mental health: A consortium of researchers, advocates and clinicians announces here research priorities for improving the lives of people with mental illness around the world, and calls for urgent action and investment. Nature, 475(7354), 27–30. http://doi.org/10.1038/475027a

NAMI. (2019). Violence and Gun Reporting Laws. https://www.nami.org/About-NAMI.