OPPORTUNITIES TO HELP
Share your knowledge.
Contribute to our community’s mental health!
Reaching Out
An educational outreach project which offers presentations by the mental health community.
Featuring
Speaking Out: A Speaker’s Bureau of area individuals willing to share their mental health knowledge.
Acting Out: An interactive theatre-based program which encourages understanding of human stuggles and discusses alternatives to help ease the burdens.
Speaking Out Program Development: Step 1
COFAMH is currently developing this program. So far we have speakers that have signed on for Suicide Awaraeness & Prevention, Coping with a mental illness of a family member, HOPE – teen mental health, and Early Intervention. We need other topics and speakers. Once we have a well-rounded speakers and topic list, COFAMH will create a brochure to promote the program.
Program Description (Beinning of the Reaching Out brochure)
You have probably heard of Vincent Van Gogh’s struggle with mental illness, but did you also know that astronaut Buzz Aldrin lived with major depression or that Winston Churchill had bipolar disorder? Howard Hughes was obsessive-compulsive and Heisman trophy winner Earl Campbell had panic disorder.
Mental illnesses are more common than most people know. They are also treatable. Without treatment, a person can suffer many more years than perhaps necessary. Untreated mental illnesses can create a barrier to learning for kids, or end in a lost job for adults or a tragic suicide by an older person.
This is why COFAMH started the Reaching Out program. Through Speaking Out the community can select from a listing of mental health speakers and topics to present in the classroom, business meeting, or church gathering.
- Do you want to hear about mental health from a first-person point of view?
- Or, are you more interested in therapeutic thought on a particular disorder?
- Or, perhaps, you want a general overview of the most common illnesses?
Acting Out offers mental health education through improvisational skits. We are currently designing the program and will be asking for participants when this has been completed.
Speaking Out Participant Form
Yes, I have mental health knowledge I want to share.
