and projected strength even during times of weakness. i would like to share with you some experiences from my childhood. for those of you that have ever been in a football locker room you may have insight into my early years. for my upbringing was filled with nflisms with my father sounding like a football coach at many times. for instance, when i was running late to church he would say, urgency son, urgency, son. body goes where the mind tells it. when i received a poor grade in school. son, you're only as good as your last play. right now, you're not very good. and of course, when i disobeyed him. son, do you want to be a part of this team? that was my father. a man that thought winning was the only option. his mentality to win served him well on the field, but off the field i'm not certain.

his persona perfection added a heavy burden. for truth of life is that losing is a part of it. in time we all lose something. our youth, our money, our loved ones. i wish my father knew that off the field there is no scoreboard. that wins and losses come and go, but despite the day there is always hope. hope is a small word with a large meaning. for when hope is lost, all is lost. february 17th, 2011, was the day my father lost hope. in a suicide note that he left for my family, he expressed regrets, apologies, and love. also, he wrote of his suspicion of a brain disease and listed his symptoms. blurred vision, short-term memory loss, mood swings and depression. his final plea was to please give his brain to the nfl brain

bank. despite my frustration, i followed the general's ordering and donated his brain to boston university. prior to this note, my father did not share with my family his symptoms nor did he tell us that he was depressed. he hid his feels, thoughts and worries by projecting a persona of strength. i wish my father knew that in order to be strong, you must first be weak. in order to be fixed, you must first be broken. and in order to be found, you must first be lost. [ applause ] >> this past year for my family has been difficult. it's been a kbreer of healing and aier of reflection. in my grief i have found comfort in the words of others. particularly one man whose family is no stranger to loss. robert f. kennedy. moments after the assassination

of martin luther king junior, kennedy offered words of wisdom and love to a mourning nation by sharing his favorite poem by es close, which goes, even in our sleep, pain which we cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of god. in times of despair, we search for an instant cure. as if there's a magic wand, formula or secret. but the truth is recovery takes time. each of us has our own trajectory. a path that is not linear, but filled with ups and downs. leading us on a never ending road towards perspective. for in loss, there is no closure, only wisdom. we will never be what we were. and we must now focus on what we can be.

over the course of my recovery, a major point of my healing came from the scientific findings of boston university. that concluded my father indeed suffered from chronic traumatic enreceive lop thi, a brain disease linked to concussions. from the damaged areas of his brain the neuroologists were able to conclude that he suffered from short-term memory loss, impulse controls and loss of other executive function. these findings answered many of my family's personal questions. but with suicide the question of what if is persistent. rather than succumb to what if, i am determined to help answer the question what now? now i know we faced an enormous and complex problem. suicide remains hidden in the shade does of stigma, myth and shame. the same people we wish to help will be our biggest obstacle. but in the depths of darkness,

there are beacons of hope. suicide is preventable. and depression is treatable. if only those that are lost would seek guidance. for most refuse help because of fear because of shame. in the battle of fear and shame, i believe the friendic sibling, son or daughter is the strongest ally for the depressed and hope is the best weapon. whenever we reach out to our family man during their moments of despair, we send forth ripples of hope. in time, ripples of hope will cross other ripples of hope and build into a tidal wave of love. a tidal wave of love can sweep down the mightest walls of depression. that is our hope. we must never give up and we must never give in to the dark hands of depression. my father's last message to me was negative thoughts lead to

negative consequences. he then left me with his favorite biblical verse from my own battle from life. i close by sharing it with you. but they that wait upon the lord shall renew their strength. they shall mount up with wings as eagles. they shall round run and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint. isaiah 30e sln 41. thank you. thank you very much. [ applause ]

>> for those of you who do not know mental health america, we are america's oldest community based network of community based organizations focused on mental health and mental health issues in the united states. we're 103 years old this year. and we are founded by a gentleman named clifford beers who he himself was involuntary committed for two years and was so appalled by the asylum system that he dedicated himself publicly to end stigma with mental health conditions. our chicago affiliate a few months ago and the executive director called me up and said this guy is great. you've got to get him involved nationally. as of this morning he's our new national spokesperson. he doesn't know that yet. [ applause ] >> and we are -- we are proud and fortunate to have him indeed.

we have -- let me tell you just a bit about our mission very briefly. it's to advocate, educate and serve. we advocate on behalf of those living with a mental health condition, broadly defined. we advocate about the harm and often mortal harm that stigma does in this country about mental health conditions each and every day. we serve the american public through our 240 affiliates in 37 states. the bell of hope sits in our lobby. in 1953 when they shut down the barbaric asylum system in our country our ceo sent out a call to send us the chains and shackles used to restrain patients to the walls. we had those chains and shackles melted down in a foundry in baltimore and forged into this 300 pound bell that sits in our lobby. we ring it on special occasions because the message of that bell

is end stigma. we need to understand that stigma kills especially in the u.s. military. we have to address it every day. i want to read you some excerpts from our real live website. we have a real lives website. it's essentially you could go on and talk about what is on your mind. there's different categories i went into the section on suicide and suicide ideation. these were people who actually attempted suicide. from a forgotten dad in washington. first and foremost i am a survivor. i have had difficult times with relationships. i keep everyone at a distance. even those who i know i can trust. trust is a big issue. i can count the number of people i trust on one hand and with those people there are doubts of trust. by charlotte in kentucky a woman who lost her son in a boating accident. doctors wrote me prescriptions for many medications. i don't know why i simply

refused to take it for the first few years. after that i began to take some of them. i couldn't even remember to eat when i was hungry. i lost all interest in doing anything fun. friends stopped coming by and stopped calling. by karen in missouri who planned suicide but was saved by an intervention. i would like to ask one thing of anyone who reads this, please listen. that's it. listen. listen to your kids when they say they're sad. never underestimate the importance of the topic. remember that we are all unique individuals. what is important to you may not be important to them and vice versa. listen to your spouse. listen to your friends. listen to your kids' friends. listen to your co-workers. listen, if i didn't have anyone to listen to me, no one would have ever heard my voice again. the theme that we settled on for this talk today is from anguish hope. certainly his dad bent the curve

of the nfl in the seriousness of traumatic brain injury in that sport. he made a difference. there is hope because of his life and the things that he contributed to the sport and to his family. similarly, nha believes right now there is a unique opportunity in american history in our culture that isson extraordinarily hopeful opportunity. you can go into any community in this country right now in the most informal setting and use the term ptsd and americans know what you're talking about. that is an amazing transformation in the awareness and the sensitivity and the receptivitity of the american public to mental health issues. we can't blow this opportunity. we can't miss this chance. we can raise the bar and forever in mental society. mental health conditions are the number one most debilitating chronic health conditions many the world today.

the united states leads the rest of the world. we can really make a difference. on wellness prevention, resilience and recovery. we have a met forewe like to use called the wellness circle. treatment, recovery and wellness. the reason that's an important metforand a symbol we like to use if you are in the green section of the wellness circle it is lurid courthouse for you to point across the circle at somebody in the blue treatment section with a treatment of stigma. you are one life event from being on the other side of the circle. and really hopeful aspect of the circle is the fact that no matter where you are on the circle, if you ask the right person and you seek out the right help, you can always find the path back to wellness. the wellness circle. it's a power jchl symbol that we like to use. i came on board mental health america just under three years ago. i'm a retired air force colonel. i worked at wounded warrior

project before. it was clear to me with mha's breadth and depth of experience, i said we have to be in this space. there's amazing white noise out in the civilian community across this country about mental health conditions and how to respond in an effective and efficient way. we're not -- we're not effectively addressing that issue. we have to figure out how to do this. mental health america is uniquely positioned how to do that. there's so many players in the space. there's so much white noise in the space. we cannot be simply yet another program and more noise that takes up more resources. we have to do this in a smart way. we said let's have a conference as everybody always does. we had a one day conference. it was impromptu. we brought everybody together that had any stake in this game. we put 35 national experts in the room. the author of the 2008 rand study was there.

the white house was represented, the white house was represented. d.o.d. was represented. the nypd pop up peer assistance program was represented. the vet to vet program. larry fritz one of the acknowledged experts in peer counselling was there. it was a great conversation. we started off with what we thought was an effective model to begin to bridge the gap between this dire need and what what we thought were enough raw resources after ten years of war to meet that need and the gap in between. but we said we don't have a hidden agenda at that conference and we really meant it, which was good, by lunchtime all 35 people at that conference had told us this was the dumbest idea. get rid of it. it's not going to work, forget it. after lunch i talked to david, i said what are we going to do here? he said let's start over. we started the afternoon with what do we all agree on? 35 national experts. and we came to a consensus. i'll share that consensus with you in just a second. but after that conference, i hit the road and traveled around the

country and we visited or talked about or examined or studied what we thought were 11 very successful national programs that are addressing this issue. with an eye towards what are the best practices and how can we bring our national network to bear in a community way. and the results of that year of travel have resulted in what we are now calling the bell of hope project. which is going to be our signature project in the military community for as far as forward as i can see. let me give you some conclusions though based on that analysis and based on some things we've seen at this conference. we believe there still remains a gap between populations need and the service delivery, the services that are delivered. what's interesting is i personally think that the need is growing and the service available services and resources are growing. these circles on either end are getting bigger and bigger.

while they're getting bigger and bigger the center point of those circles is moving further apart. there's a larger gap between our military community at the local level and the civilian community than i think i've ever seen in my lifetime. the gap, the absolute gap between the edges of the circles is roughly the same. we have to bridge that gap. this piece in here is where we need the help. let me give you a couple of stories to illustrate that gap. i was in charge of the care giver conference, the team of three or four of us at wounded warrior project we're fortunate enough to have the care giver legislation to have the law in 2010 as your principal project that we spearheaded from a cold start. we brought 18 caregivers with severely disabled vets into washington. we had a session that was supposed to last for an hour and a half. it was a horseshoed shaped set up in the room. on one side were all the service representatives, the white house, the d.o.d. and all the

representatives familiar with all the programs that were available for caregivers of severely disabled vets. on the other side of the horseshoe were the 18 caregivers. for an hour all of those government representatives talked about all the programs in place to help those caregivers. everything they've done and all the progress they've made to help those caregivers. at the end of the hour there was a pregnant pause and oneover the caregivers said thank you very much, i'm sorry, i think i speak for all the caregivers when i tell you we don't have a clue what you're talk about. so for the next three hours and some of the senior officials in that room cancelled meetings. they talked about how can we begin to bridge this gap. second story happened last okts. we took the bell on a mini tour. one of the places we went was the indianapolis national guard armory. many of you plano that the v.a. medical center is in indianapolis and has one of the top facilities. the armery is five miles up the

beltway. we had a slot for david and i to explain the bell of hope project to about 200 guard members and their families. the slot was 9:00 on a sunday morning. i leaned other to david and said this is a huge thud. it's probably a mandatory formation at 9:00 on sunday morning and there may be no engagement here at all. so off we go. we did our presentation. they kept us 45 minutes after the scheduled one hour talk. and let me give you some of the comments. the first person that stood up said, look, we know we have mental health issues. we're not ashamed to say that. we talk about it all the time. but what i really need help with is day care because i can't find any and i don't know where to turn to get day care help. one of the comments was you are the first civilian organization in ten years to talk to us about mental health. now, this illustrates the gap

that we have to address in order to make practical reality. we feel very strongly the solution the not a top down solution. i was in wounded warrior project. i went to a lot of congressional hearings. i don't know how anybody works in v.a., you guys are walking around with targets not just on your front and bark. all over your body. you're covered with targets. and it's not right and it's not fair because every person i've met in the v.a. is dedicated, professional, world class. they're topnotch. i don't think -- we are losing this generation and the last generation of heroes from the military community because we're not yet solving this problem.

we must bend this curve in a significant way and we have to do it now. they're 22.7 oz of 2010, there are 22.7 million vets in the united states. this is not dependents, this is vets. of them 8.3 million or 37% are enrolled in the v.a. health care system. of the ones who are enrolled in the v.a. health care system 47% avail themselves of outpatient care. if you combine those two numbers that means that 17.39% of veterans are seeking v.a. care. 17%. that number does not even begin to address the dependence and families that aren't eligible for care. i'm not sure the current regulations. it may have changed, but i'm pretty sure the majority of people in that armory on that sunday morning in indianapolis were not allowed to use the best

behavorial health care facility in the v.a. five miles down the road. how do we solve that problem? their dependents couldn't use that facility. how do we solve that problem? init's incumbent among the civilian community to stop putting yellow rib bobs on their bumpers and stand up at the community level and start to solve this problem en masse. [ applause ] an interesting side note 21% of enroll lees didn't know they were enroll lees. that's amazing. but remember, if the v.a. and everything that we've talked about over the last three days worked perfectly, you'd reach 17% of the affected veteran population. that again doesn't count dependents. we think another conclusion that we reached over the last year and been rephonersed our informal analysis indicates that integrated care is the answer very early in the process.

it's when somebody calls us and says i need day care on thursday to go to my job interview. do you know how i can get that? that's where we have to begin to address suicide prevention. only america's communities can solve this. believe me, i've been out since 1997. america's communities are trying desperately to do exactly that. they just don't know how. they're competing for ever dwindling resources. let me tell you, i've been in the nonprofit community since '89 v 97, it's pretty bleak out there. with the economy the way it is every nonprofit is fighting tooth and nail for every penny. here are the conference findings that came out of that one-day conference in february 2011. peers work. four lessons, number one, peers

work. did everybody remember the story a very compelling story of the crisis intervention line and its success in the very first day. how many people have you heard carefully that that sequence started with a peer connection? it didn't start with a call directly to the line. it started with a peer connection. peers work. they need to be trained. they need to be certified to a national standard. we think we are i hope i was going to get word sometime today, but maybe not. we're hoping by next week we will have hopefully full funding from a foundation that asked us to design an implement the first national peer training and certification program. i know the v.a. just issued an rfp for exactly that. we talked with the v.a. we said if we build one as well that's completely not attached to the v.a. would you certify it. they said absolutely. go for it. that's what we're going to do. peers work. number two, peers navigate their principal function is to

navigate at the community level. it isn't just about mental health and being a peer specialist for mental health it's about navigating and answering every single need. which means they need to know what the community has available in all the sectors of service. when that person calls and says i need day care next thursday, the peer says got it. i heard that. i listened. i'm going to go find you day care and i'm going to call you back and we're going to continue to follow up until you get that day care. number three, effective local community resource directory and local community collaboration. the community blueprint is a terrific program that is trying to collaborate and create a blueprint for how you collaborate with community sfrss. it's a very important function. we think that military family members, military community members veterans and caregivers and dependents it's a whole gamut, retired, active duty. they need to have access to an online resource directory at their community that really rates the services that are

available. it tells them what insurance plans they accept. how much is it going to cost. what's my point of contact. are you accepting new clients. i've had 25 people rate this three stars out of five. those function have to exist at the local community level so there's an easy way for people in the military community to find what community resources are available. and last and it was touched on before we need a really aggressive outreach program. let me tell you a tragic story about outreach. coleman bean took his life in 2011 in new jersey. got a bill passed he was an individual ready reserve. i went and talked to linda bean before we started to do this for mha. i said i want to make sure we don't duplicate effort and basically don't solve the problem because we're just turning around in circles like a lot of us tend to do when we start these thins off. she really appreciated the visit. the next day i went to

university of veterinary program in new jersey. it's a ten-minute car drive from coleman bean's front door and they didn't know about each other. that's the challenge that we have in front of us. that son-in-law going to be solved at the community level. and is only going to be solved by organizations that exist and have name recognition at the community level. so aggressive outreach. based on our conference findings on our examination of these programs we believe a solution should be based on four principles. peer navigation has to lie at the heart of it. we're convinced of that. peers can overcome stigma. it's the first line of defense. it's the friendly front door. peers can overcome stigma. difrly rf integrated services. you can't just be this sector or this sector. you have to say what do you need and be able to answer that question at large. number three, measurable outcomes. i'm a stickler on this. if i can't measure it, it is not a success. when you hear about a program in

a community and someone says we get this all the time. people already doing that. we already have that program going on. i ask three questions, one, how many clients have you helped? two, what are the long-term outcomes for that client of your assistance? three, what is your client feel about the help you provided? if you can't answer those three questions you cannot claim success. so anything you do has to have a measurable outcome. finally, this is really important. local flexibility. it is not one size fits all. it is one size fits one. there has to be some structure. some skeletal structure that will enable the butterflies to fly in formation. that's what we're trying to do. we want the get everybody moving in the same direction in a way where you can pour the unique community resources into that framework and have them be most effective and most efficient forever. and ideally we'd like to start with the military community, but i can tell you this template will work for all social services in all communities around america.

and americans are ready to hear this message. if i can have the slide up, please. thank you. this is what we call the community guide on model. it's based on the aspen point and peer navigator model in colorado springs. they have kindly worked with us to expand it out and make it a bit more generic. mma's goal as of just a few weeks ago is to create a network using this model. the model is come prized of six rings of service. you can consider the inner ring the most important and the outer ring the least important. but all six are very important. all six rings each of these rings, now if you say, have you implemented the community guide on model and do you have results yet? no. but i can tell you a number of organizations there's at least one organization that his implemented each of these six rings and successfully. the aspen point model is

probably the best, but there's umdmj has a terrific one. university of michigan has a terrific one. they need to be backed up by trained clinicians. they have mapped every active duty guard reserve and dependent in every county of the united states. if you want to know what that population is in your county, they can tell you. they have mapped clinicians. they are continuing to do that to be able to tell you what clinicians can back up that peer structure in your community in a substantiative way. they need to be managed by a database that allows effective continuous follow up by the peers. the dark red ring is now the community collaboration piece. the best model we found is probably community blueprint. but the community blueprint folks has told us it is very difficult to get community resources with each other and get measurable outcomes. they need to be divided into sectors of service.