The Mental Health Industry Could Use Some Work
Righting the wrongs of the mental health system is what earned Wesley Alcorn, who is president of the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) Consumer Council, the NAMI Wolf Award for 1998. The NAMI Wolf Awards were instituted six years ago to recognize those citizens who spoke up and challenged the mental healthcare system’s status quo.
Alcorn was in the audience when Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, director of the Stanley Research Institute, first explained the concept of the NAMI Wolf Awards. Named after the aggressive animal, says Torrey, it is awarded to a NAMI member who has been particularly effective and outspoken in trying to improve services for people with serious mental illness. It goes to one who has “raised hell,” says Torrey, rather than …