The Penn Project for Civic Engagement worked with WHYY and the Fred Friendly Seminars to design and conduct two civic engagement processes focusing on challenges raised by our mental/behavioral health system. The goal of our project was to develop a civic to-do list for improving mental health awareness, understanding, and services in the region.

We built this project around the Fred Friendly Seminar video entitled "Minds on the Edge: Facing Mental Illness." The video explores demanding ethical issues and challenges in program and policy design, service coordination, and resource allocation in the nation’s mental/behavioral health "system." These problems are contributing to a mental health system that is widely acknowledged to be broken. Thus, the video also provides a glimpse into innovative solutions that are currently being implemented across the country. These innovations, many shaped by the guidance and expertise of people with mental illness, offer promising solutions and hopeful direction to transform the mental health system.

The first forum was held on June 18, 2009 during which we held a national preview of the video and conducted small group and plenary discussions with more than 100 people. Those discussions identified how key issues raised in the seminar play out in the Delaware Valley and developed action steps for addressing some of those issues. View the moderator's reports from this forum here. (need to add a link to a page with reports which doesn’t exist yet.)

The second forum was held on October 15th. At that time, more than 50 people dug deeper into three issues identified as most important on June 18th and in subsequent on-line discussions: the "recovery model," access to resources, and prioritizing services in times of tight budgets. Participants focused on developing action plans to improve each area. Moderator reports for this session and action steps for each issue are available here. (again, add a link with a these reports. I'll send those to you later.)

News coverage can be found on WHYY’s web site.