How Do Mental Health Advocacy Organizations View Mental Illness?

• In Event: Social Identity, Racial Identity, and Political Behavior

Abstract

How do mental health advocacy organizations view mental illness? Who do they consider the most deserving? Where do they direct their efforts and what do they do with issues, conditions, or people they do not have the resources to help? In a previous chapter of my dissertation, I found that individuals who categorize themselves as having a mental illness in their lifetime are also likely to consider it a part of their identity and it affects their political views about healthcare, education, and welfare state spending. If mental illness is a political identity, why don’t we see more effective organizing around it? To answer this question, I interview employees from Mental Health America (MHA) and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)—two national mental health advocacy organizations. I focus on questions surrounding deservingness, funding and resource allocation, political support, and identity. I find that mental health advocacy organizations at the local and national level will focus on helping advanced marginalized groups (middle-class white people with anxiety or depression) instead of intersectionally marginalized groups (black people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder). Additionally, there seems to be tension between local coalition-building efforts between mental health advocacy affiliates of national organizations and the messaging, publicity, and funding goals of the organizations’ national offices.

Author

• Lauren Van De Hey