May is Mental Health Awareness month. Only 1 day of the month is focused on children and adolescents—National Child Mental Health Awareness Day. Considering that 75% of all psychiatric illness has its onset before age 24 and 50% before age 14, it seems that 1 day is not sufficient or fair to the 17 million children and adolescents in our nation who have a psychiatric illness. For these reasons in 2010, the Child Mind Institute established Speak Up For Kids for the entire month of May. We joined forces with Parents Magazine as our media partner and Hunter as our corporate partner to educate America how real, common, and treatable mental health disorders are in our youth. Today Speak Up For Kids has more than 100 partners including our founding partners as well as WebMD, the JED Foundation, National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), and many others.
We are kicking off the 2016 Speak Up for Kids month on May 3rd with Whoopi Goldberg at the 13th annual Adam Katz Memorial Conversation (http://childmind.org/event/2016-katz-lecture/). Whoopi is a great actress and a great person, known for her candor, empathy, and humor; she will be speaking with me about dyslexia and how it has affected her life. When icons like Whoopi share their stories, it helps bring people out of isolation and encourages families and communities to get access to the resources, information, and support their kids need to reach their full potential.
And on May 10th, we will hold our Change Maker Awards (http://childmind.org/event/2016-change-maker-awards/) hosted by NBC's Al Roker and celebrating the work of individuals like NY Jet wide receiver Brandon Marshall, National Council on Behavioral Health CEO Linda Rosenberg, and Alex and Ani CEO Carolyn Rafaelian. In addition, we will honor a child mental health hero and organization who are transforming children's lives and the mental health field nominated in collaboration with our Speak Up for Kids partners and selected by the public through social media.
We will end the month with the release of the second annual Child Mind Institute Children's Mental Health Report. The 2016 report will focus on how poor mental health impacts school functioning, what research tells us about the long-term effects, and how school-based approaches to general mental health and specific disorders are transforming schools and leveraging the access to resources they provide to this population.
Speaking of resources, information, and getting connected, childmind.org has relaunched, making it easier to get quick access to free advice and support on your phone, tablet, or desktop—and in Spanish (http://childmind.org/recursos-en-espanol/) too. New guides (http://childmind.org/topics-a-z/guides/) pull together the most important information in step-by-step form, and you can watch and read engaging personal stories (http://childmind.org/our-impact/our-stories/) like the one Whoopi will share in May. Our online symptom checker (http://childmind.org/symptomchecker/), also available in Spanish (http://childmind.org/chequeo-de-sintomas/), is a great place for parents who are worried about their child.
Speak Up for Kids this spring is all about advancing our core principles: raising awareness, sharing information, building communities, and, most of all, telling stories that can change lives. Whether we are meeting online or on the street, coming together will make the change we want to see for our kids.
