Rethink Mental Illness is a charity in England. Its mission statement is "Working together to help everyone affected by severe mental illness recover a better quality of life." The organisation was founded in 1972 by relatives of people diagnosed with schizophrenia, following an article by a journalist whose son had been diagnosed. The operating name of 'Rethink' was adopted in 2002 but the charity remains registered as the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, although it no longer focuses only on schizophrenia. The operating name was expanded in 2011 to be more self-explanatory.
Rethink now has over 8,300 members, who receive a regular magazine called Your Voice. The charity states that it helps 48,000 people every year, and is for carers as well as those with a mental illness. It provides services (mainly community support, including supported housing projects), support groups, and information through a helpline and publications. The Rethink website receives almost 300,000 visitors every year. Rethink carries out some survey research which informs both their own and national mental health policy, and it actively campaigns against stigma and for change through greater awareness and understanding. It is a member organisation of EUFAMI, the European Federation of Families of People with Mental Illness.
The current chief executive is Paul Jenkins, appointed in 2006 after 20 years experience of management and policy-making in central government and the National Health Service.
Read more about Rethink Mental Illness: Campaigns, Funding, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words mental illness, rethink, mental and/or illness:
“The entire construct of the “medical model” of “mental illness”Mwhat is it but an analogy? Between physical medicine and psychiatry: the mind is said to be subject to disease in the same manner as the body. But whereas in physical medicine there are verifiable physiological proofs—in damaged or affected tissue, bacteria, inflammation, cellular irregularity—in mental illness alleged socially unacceptable behavior is taken as a symptom, even as proof, of pathology.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“The end product of child raising is not only the child but the parents, who get to go through each stage of human development from the other side, and get to relive the experiences that shaped them, and get to rethink everything their parents taught them. The get, in effect, to reraise themselves and become their own person.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“In many ways, life becomes simpler [for young adults]. . . . We are expected to solve only a finite number of problems within a limited range of possible solutions. . . . It’s a mental vacation compared with figuring out who we are, what we believe, what we’re going to do with our talents, how we’re going to solve the social problems of the globe . . .and what the perfect way to raise our children will be.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)
“... how I understand that love of living, of being in this wonderful, astounding world even if one can look at it only through the prison bars of illness and suffering! Plus je vois, the more I am thrilled by the spectacle.”
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)