Strength-based approaches to community healing

Looking at what’s working

Connect 4 Mental Health is not a movie, nor is it fictional. Connect 4 Mental Health is a national initiative that: "... calls for communities to prioritize serious mental illness. The campaign encourages greater collaboration among the mental health community and other community-based organizations – such as emergency services, law enforcement, and public housing – to implement localized programs and services that help support the estimated 1 in 17 Americans living with serious mental illness, their families, and the communities in which they live."

Connect 4 Mental Health recognizes and exploits the importance of and need for developing partnerships, collaborations, and connections that start at home – the communities in which we live, in which we provide services, and in which the people we serve and their families live and experience recovery and healing.

We cannot deny that recent tragic events have the nation, including our federal government, focused on serious mental illness and mental health care. Problems demand solutions, and the generative process to develop solutions used in the past focused on "the problem statement" or approaching "what’s wrong/what’s not working."

By focusing on the experience of recovery and healing from the perspective of people living with mental illness, family members, mental health professionals and innovative programs, Connect 4 Mental Health actually looks at what’s right and working to develop strategies to improve mental health care and generate community-based solutions for unmet mental health needs. This approach, known as Appreciative Inquiry, shifts focus from the weakness to strengths (from what’s wrong to what’s strong) in organizations, people, and systems, in a way that’s similar to how we use strength-based approaches in our work as mental health professionals with the people we serve.

The Affordable Care Act, the 10 Essential Health Benefits, and shifts in funding from quantity to quality and improved outcomes (such as reduction in hospitalization incentives), along with the national focus on mental illness and mental health care, can be viewed as a challenge or an alignment of the stars for our various professions to invite and involve, connect, and collaborate in new ways that result in the healing of people living with serious mental illness, families, mental health professionals, and most importantly, our communities as a whole.

If you haven’t done so, watch "Lars and the Real Girl" to explore the possibility, get an infusion of hope, and perhaps, connect to the reason we all enter this field, no matter what our title or role: to help people connect to meaning and purpose in their lives, and heal.

Ms. Myrick is president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness board of directors, and serves as president and CEO of the Project Return Peer Support Network in Los Angeles County. She serves as a consultant to the California Institute on Mental Health. She is a PhD candidate at Alliant International University, Los Angeles.

Dr. Primm is deputy medical director of the American Psychiatric Association, and director of the APA’s Division of Diversity and Health Equity.