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Remarks by
A. Kathryn Power, M.Ed.
Director

Center for Mental Health Services
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

National Wellness Summit for People with Mental Illnesses

September 17, 2007
Rockville, MD

Opening Remarks

Good morning. Let me be the first to welcome you to this Summit. We have been brought together by a Call to Action...a rallying cry that beckons us to bring our knowledge, our experiences, and all of the resources at our disposal to create a national action plan that promotes wellness for people living with mental illnesses.

This is a vision the late Bill Compton worked long and hard to realize. Before he passed away last month, Bill headed the consumer-run Project Return Peer Support Network, based in Los Angeles and affiliated with the Mental Health Association of LA. Under his leadership, the Network grew from about 30 peer-support groups to more than 100. Bill also served on the Board of Directors of Mental Health America and was president of the board of Protection and Advocacy, Incorporated of California. He helped improve lives and the mental health system by giving people with mental illnesses a greater stake and say in the services they receive. For his tremendous work, Bill received the prestigious Clifford Beers Award.

He would be pleased to know that you’ve come together to take the first vital steps towards solving the public health crisis of co-morbidity and early mortality. At this summit, you will lay the groundwork for the long and winding road to wellness and recovery for every American. I salute you for your willingness to embark on this journey and I am excited about what lies ahead.

Introduction for Terry Cline

I am happy to introduce our SAMHSA Administrator, Dr. Terry Cline, who assumed his position in January. Hailing from the great State of Oklahoma, he spent the previous two years serving as the State’s Secretary of Health where he was an early champion of mental health transformation. During his tenure in that position, Oklahoma became one of the first States to align its strategic plan with the goals of the New Freedom Commission and use its block grant to promote a new recovery-oriented State behavioral health service system.

Prior to his position as Secretary, he served as Commissioner of Oklahoma’s Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services where he built strong collaborative relationships among public and private organizations and government agencies that touch the lives of people with substance abuse and mental health problems.

In addition to his work in Oklahoma, this transformational leader also spent 6 years as a clinical instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and served as chairman of the governing board for a Harvard teaching hospital in Cambridge. Over the years, his passion and commitment to improving the supports and services of individuals with substance abuse and mental health disorders is unsurpassed. Please join me in welcoming, SAMHSA’s Administrator…Dr. Terry Cline.

Talking Points (following Terry Cline’s remarks)

The Crisis of Early Mortality

• 10.3 million people in this country have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness. The diagnosis not only changes their lives, but shortens them significantly.
• The life expectancy for individuals with serious mental illnesses is about 25 years less than the general population. Data shows that male consumers are likely to die at 53 years of age and female consumers at age 59. The National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) Medical Director’s Council recently reported that more persons with serious mental illnesses die of treatable medical conditions that are caused by modifiable risk factors such as smoking, obesity, substance abuse, and inadequate access to medical care.
• The implications of these statistics for the Nation are profound. How will we ever help people with mental illnesses recover if we can’t keep them alive and healthy? This trend cannot continue. This is a problem that we can do something about…that we must do something about. Whether we are in federal, state or local government, we all have a stake in this. This is a shared problem demanding a shared solution.

A Public Health Approach to the Crisis of Early Mortality

• We must adopt a public health approach to this crisis of early mortality. We must sustain our efforts over time and commit to the long journey ahead, knowing that it will be one of peaks and valleys.
• We have set the goal of reducing early mortality by 10 years over the next 10 years.
• But how do we begin? The journey starts today, with each and every person gathered here. We may each have different titles, and different roles to play, but we are all here today because we share a common belief—the belief that people can and do recover from mental illnesses.
• We need to join forces and combine our energies and talents to be most effective. This crisis demands that we address it on multiple fronts and through various, strategic approaches, involving consumers, providers, and other stakeholders to create a solution.

The Goal of Recovery

• Individuals with mental illnesses are real people with jobs, families, hobbies, interests, and dreams. We must accept and embrace the fact that we are not just treating mental disorders. We’re treating people.
• Research suggests, and our own practice confirms, that each of these individual’s best hope for recovery lies in integrated, whole-person centered, recovery-focused care.
• Last year, SAMSHA unveiled a consensus statement outlining the principle components of mental health recovery. The statement was developed right here, in this building, at our consensus conference in 2005. It was based on the deliberations of more than 110 expert panelists representing mental health consumers, families, providers, advocates, researchers, managed care organizations, State and local public officials, and others.
• Together, they arrived at this consensus definition of recovery for adults. “Mental health recovery is a journey of healing and transformation for a person with a mental health problem to be able to live a meaningful life in a community of his or her choice while striving to achieve maximum human potential.”
• The definition is built on ten fundamental components:
  
  
  1. Self-Direction
  2. Individualized and Person-Centered
  3. Empowerment
  4. Holistic
  5. Non-Linear
  6. Strengths-Based
  7. Peer Support
  8. Respect
  9. Responsibility
  10. Hope


• Based on this understanding of recovery, the opportunity exists to create a holistic health care system where providers and consumers, in partnership, develop individualized plans of care that respond to the whole person and his or her comprehensive needs to achieve wellness.
• As individuals, we are well aware of our own unique strengths and vulnerabilities. This is knowledge that we use to manage our overall health and well-being. In mental health care, as in any health care, this knowledge should be shared with providers to map out the best way to promote and protect recovery.
• Individuals with mental illnesses can develop their own resources for healing and growth. Researchers at the University of Kansas found that many consumers value “personal medicine” over medications. Personal medicine refers to activities that individuals develop to give purpose and meaning to their lives and that serve to raise their self-esteem, decrease symptoms, and avoid unwanted outcomes such as hospitalization. Jobs and self-care strategies such as exercising are examples of personal medicine.

Achieving Wellness

• Personal medicine strategies go straight to the heart of the definition and dimensions of wellness. Wellness means more than “absence from disease.”
• Dr. Bill Hettler, Cofounder and President of the Board of Directors of the National Wellness Institute, developed an interdependent model of wellness with 6 dimensions:
  
  
  1. Physical
  2. Spiritual
  3. Intellectual
  4. Social
  5. Emotional
  6. Occupational


• Taken together, these dimensions outline the components of a quality life.
• People with serious mental illnesses deserve to live full, meaningful lives that are as long and healthy as the lives as other Americans. This morning, I urge each of you to join forces to help us draft a national action plan that propels our Nation—and all of its citizens—towards this goal.

Closing: Eleanor Roosevelt Quote

• Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “The course of history is directed by the choices we make, and our choices grow out of the ideas, the beliefs, the values, and the dreams of the people. It is not so much the powerful leaders that determine our destiny as the much more powerful influence of the combined voices of the people themselves.”

That quote is from an essay she called “Tomorrow Is Now.” She picked the title to emphasize that the future is shaped by the actions we take today. You are the people. Combine your voices during this two day summit to create an action plan that promotes wellness, eliminates the public health crisis of early mortality, and better serves the needs of our citizens.