After concluding my 4-year ongoing relationship with NAMI North Carolina, I resumed working with the organization a few years later, providing additional graphic design and consulting services to support the proposed “Treatment Works” campaign.

Consulting and Creative Services

Some Thoughts on the Treatment Works Awareness Campaign

The Opportunity

With the April 1998 release of a study of North Carolina’s psychiatric hospitals, followed in December 1999 by the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Illness and in April 2000 by the state auditor’s report on North Carolina’s mental health care system, considerable attention has recently been focused on mental health care. Never before have the shortcomings of our state’s mental health care system been more clearly delineated and documented. All three reports independently confirm what members of NAMI North Carolina know from firsthand experience: North Carolina’s mental health care system—like systems in most other states—is cruelly inadequate and in need of immediate, radical reform.

With the issues raised by these three reports, the upcoming gubernatorial election, and the need for reform more visible and better-documented than ever before, NAMI North Carolina now faces the best opportunity in its history to assume a leadership role in advocating for positive, lasting change in our mental health care system. For NAMI North Carolina to seize this unprecedented opportunity, the executive director plans to launch parallel internal and external awareness campaigns.

The Treatment Works Campaign

As “North Carolina’s Voice on Mental Illness,” NAMI North Carolina is charged with the responsibility of speaking on behalf of people with mental illnesses and helping create intelligent, effective solutions to the well-documented problems with our state mental health care system. As the state’s leading mental health advocate, it is up to NAMI North Carolina—

• to identify, amplify and personalize the most critical issues surrounding mental health care in North Carolina,
• to develop well-reasoned, aggressive positions on these issues, and
• to develop and implement action plans to foster the best, most appropriate responses to the issues.

As a foundation for accomplishing these goals, NAMI North Carolina plans an awareness campaign with the theme, “Treatment Works.” A theme tagline could be, “Just ask a NAMI member,” or “Just ask NAMI.” This gets the organization name into the picture and is a good set-up for testimonials and profiles. It also helps position NAMI as an authority on the treatment of mental illnesses.

The theme, “Treatment Works,” and the voice-over tag (“Treatment works. We can help. You can help. Call us.”) for the public service announcements supports messages to several targeted audiences while fitting well with NAMI’s mission to educate, support and advocate.

Message	Mission supported	Target audience(s)
Treatment works.	Education	People with mental illnesses, their families, friends and employers, the general public
We can help.	Support	People with mental illnesses, their families and friends
You can help.	Advocacy	People recovering from mental illnesses, their families and friends, health care providers, legislators

 

The “Treatment Works” theme ties directly to a number of important issues which will serve as the basis for campaign message content.

Issue	Key Messages
The physical causes of mental illness	Medical science proves mental illnesses are brain disorders—not character flaws.
Coping with mental illnesses	People with mental illnesses can benefit from medical treatment and support services. Families of people with mental illnesses can benefit from peer support and education. NAMI North Carolina is one of the state’s leading sources of information and support.
The stigma of mental illness	In spite of advances in understanding their physical causes, most people with mental illnesses and/or their families are ashamed of the disease or disorder. People with mental illnesses often experience unfair discrimination at work and in society because of the stigma attached to mental illness. Many people believe people with mental illnesses are dangerous or violent.
Parity	Because mental illnesses have physical causes, they should be covered by health insurance plans just as any physical illness is covered. Contrary to what some employer groups have claimed, in real-world tests of parity, employers’ health plan costs did not rise dramatically. Any increased expense must be weighed against improvements in worker productivity. Treatments for many mental illnesses have better success rates than treatments for many common health problems, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer, and so represent a better investment of health care dollars.
Availability and quality of mental health services in North Carolina	For treatment to work, high-quality care must be available and affordable through North Carolina’s mental health care system. Currently, the state’s system is shamefully inadequate. North Carolinians with mental illnesses do not and cannot receive the care they need—care that, given recent advances in treatment, could substantially transform thousands of lives for the better. Anyone who cares about effective, compassionate care for people with mental illnesses should join NAMI North Carolina. NAMI North Carolina is the state’s single best authority on issues related to mental illness and the best-qualified organization to lead the system reform efforts.

Two Campaigns in One

The “Treatment Works” campaign should be tailored for both internal and external audiences. The internal campaign targets current members, while the external campaign targets key audiences outside the organization.

The Internal Campaign

Many of NAMI North Carolina’s most steadfast, loyal members view their local affiliates primarily as supportive social units. Members of longstanding enjoy gathering with their friends, talking about their problems and helping each other cope with the day-to-day challenges of living with a family member’s mental illness. The bonds of friendship are strong, and many personal needs for support are being satisfied. True understanding of the critical issues now facing our state appear to be lacking, however, and few core members appear motivated to action.

The campaign challenge is to make members aware of these issues and NAMI North Carolina’s position on them and then, to motivate members to specific, meaningful, effective action. Therefore, NAMI North Carolina’s internal awareness campaign will seek to—

• Build awareness and understanding of key mental health issues among members
• Create a sense of urgency surrounding the issues
• Lead members to recognize and assume their rightful role in shaping reform of the state mental health care system
• Identify and support specific actions members can take to fulfill their advocacy role most effectively

Current members will also be encouraged to take specific steps to become agents of change within their own communities—where many, including the state auditor’s report authors, suggest delivery of care should be centered.

The External Campaign

As current, traditional members are called to action, NAMI North Carolina will launch a parallel awareness campaign among targeted to external audiences. Members from both traditional and new constituencies will be aggressively recruited to join NAMI North Carolina’s fight for a fair, compassionate system of mental health care throughout the state, regardless of whether or not they have been touched personally by mental illness, in much the same way well-fed people are asked to help feed the hungry. To attract this new type of member, NAMI North Carolina must use the external campaign to redefine its membership to include people who support its mission simply because it is the right thing to do.

Besides strengthening benefits for its traditional member base, NAMI North Carolina must develop new member benefits to satisfy the needs of non-traditional members—needs that will likely be very different from those of core members. For example, many new members’ reasons for joining will center on service to others rather than on solving personal and family problems, so they will have little or no interest in attending support group meetings.

Most components of the External Campaign can be adapted, as appropriate, for the internal campaign.

• Content can be adapted and made available to targeted audiences through the NAMI Web site and /or a campaign news site.
• Feature stories released to media can be adapted for publication on the Web and in “Clippings.”
• Campaign advertisements featuring the campaign logo and theme can be published in “Clippings” as space is available.
• News releases and fact sheets can be supplied to local affiliates to distribute at meetings and with local media contacts.

Campaign Tools—The Media Kit

Kit contents will include—

• A news release announcing the “Treatment Works” campaign. The release will offer an overview of the campaign—its purpose, initiatives and expected results.

• Fact sheet: Mental Illness in [Location]. Statistical profiles, statewide and localized for each major market, based on county population figures and estimates of the incidence of various diseases.

• Backgrounders—

• Treatment Works for Depression
• Treatment Works for Bipolar Disorder
• Treatment Works for Schizophrenia
• Treatment Works for Serious Emotional Disorders and Mental Illnesses in Children

Each backgrounder/fact sheet would follow a similar format and cover—

• Incidence of the disease or disorder in North Carolina
• Symptoms of the disease
• Causes and effects of the disease
• Treatments of the disease and how they work
• Treatment efficacy rates
• Personal, social and economic benefits of successful treatment
• Sources of more information, including knowledgeable NAMI members with firsthand experience of the subject matter

Campaign Tools—Feature Article Series

The media kit will be most useful during the launch phase of the campaign. Ongoing follow-up through promotion of feature stories will maintain campaign visibility among editors and reporters while keeping interest in the campaign alive over time, well beyond the kick-off phase.

Under the “Treatment Works” umbrella, variations on the theme will include—

• Treatment Works for Me—a series of profiles of people for whom treatment is working. These stories will present a variety of people of all ages whose illnesses represent a broad spectrum in terms of diagnosis, nature and severity of symptoms, functional abilities and level of independence before and after treatment.
• Treatment Works at Work—one or more fact-based features on the true costs of mental illnesses to businesses and how treatment for employees’ mental illnesses improves productivity in the workplace. These features, targeted to the business community, could also explore parity issues, costs and comparative efficacy rates of treatments for mental versus other physical illnesses.
• Treatment Works in Our Community—localized stories on the need for and benefits of community-based mental health care. This story could focus on the need to reform the state’s mental health care system by exploring the challenge of caring for the community’s mentally ill people—particularly those who are homeless and/or who are in urgent need of treatment. 

Campaign Tools—The ‘Treatment Works’ Campaign Kit for Affiliates

When NAMI North Carolina offered Balancing Act to ten local affiliates, the state office provided customized publicity materials and a detailed “to-do” list of tasks to be carried out by affiliates staging the play. In similar fashion, the state office can support affiliates’ campaign participation by providing customized publicity materials and step-by-step instructions for staging campaign-related events.

One possibility might be to arrange for an expert speaker and/or a recovering consumer to address a local meeting as a special campaign event. Or a local affiliate could organize a panel discussion or public forum built around “Treatment Works”” themes in which several experts present information and answer questions about various treatment-related issues. An affiliate could team with the local chamber of commerce to sponsor a forum on parity-related issues. Or an affiliate could sponsor a “Treatment Works” information booth at county fairs, hospital health fairs, and other such community events.

Support materials for affiliates might include—

• Campaign poster(s)
• Business cards featuring the campaign logo and slogan, “Treatment works. Just ask ________” for individual affiliate members to distribute. The cards would have the state Helpline number and space for the member to write in their own name and a local contact number.
• Campaign lapel buttons and/or bumper stickers and/or tee shirts that say, “Treatment works. Just ask me.”
• Generic program/speech scripts and visuals for 15, 30 and 45 minute presentations by local volunteer speakers. (Produced as a PowerPoint presentation—output could be computer file, 35mm slides or overhead transparencies.)
• A supply of Helpline cards
• A supply of NAMI North Carolina brochures—

• Who We Are and What We Do
• Understanding Mental Illnesses
• Understanding Depression
• Understanding Bipolar Disorder
• Understanding Schizophrenia
• Understanding Serious Emotional Disorders and Mental Illnesses in Children and Adolescents

Observations & Suggestions

Reconsider the idea of a news conference to launch the campaign. The reason to stage a news conference is to announce legitimate, timely, relatively important news that cannot be more effectively disseminated any other way. Instead of going to the trouble and expense of staging a news conference which might not be all that well-received by busy editors and reporters, consider investing more resources in making the media kit a better, more widely distributed tool for them to use in developing their campaign coverage.

Create a panel of experts. Instead of using a “celebrity” spokesperson, assemble a group of the state’s leading experts on various aspects of mental illness as related to the “Treatment Works” campaign messages and get them to agree to participate in the campaign. We could consider speakers from previous conferences and contact university and medical school public relations departments to identify experts to include, develop brief summaries of their qualifications and work and promote them as media sources and, if they’re willing, as speakers or panelists. This would be more in keeping with the medical angle of “Treatment Works” and would reinforce NAMI North Carolina’s positioning as a source of serious, authoritative information. Ideally, they would be available to speak at local affiliate meetings, and their programs could be the subject of local news releases to support the campaign.

Plan media relations approaches to suit the needs of the publication or broadcast. Use a two-tiered approach based on the size and resources available to the media outlet. For large to mid-sized newspapers and broadcast news organizations, pitch story ideas by letter to sympathetic reporters (identified through analysis of bylines in newspaper clippings), supplemented generously with fact sheets and backgrounders, and let them write their own stories. For smaller outlets, provide news releases ready for publication.

Consider shifting the campaign focus from broadcast to print, live speakers and the World Wide Web. In terms of “bang for the buck,” video is probably the least cost-effective. While the free public service announcements produced by NAMI are of reasonable quality, easy to localize and fit in well with the “Treatment Works” theme, producing an original 8- to 10-minute videotape program may be disproportionately costly, relative to other means of disseminating information. Audience quality standards for video programs are based on generously-financed commercials and programs they see on television. By comparison, low- to moderate-budget productions can be perceived as cheap and low-quality—not qualities we want associated with NAMI North Carolina. For a similar investment, you could produce an impressive printed piece and/or provide high-quality visuals to support speakers’ presentations, or develop more and better campaign-related content for the Web site. You might also consider and compare costs for a print advertising campaign featuring the campaign theme and some of the people featured in the news releases. The ad copy might say, “Treatment Works. Just Ask John Doe.” Under a picture of John Doe would be a brief summary of how the quality of his life improved because of treatment for a mental illness. The ad would conclude with the Helpline number.

Consider proposals for funding individual elements of the total campaign. For example, you could request funding for developing the “Treatment Works” Expert Panel and for promoting and funding their speaking engagements around the state. You might make a case for supporting the development of the media kit and an accompanying campaign news Web site to help editors and reporters understand that treatment works. You could seek funding for researching and developing the “Treatment Works for Me”/”Treatment Works at Work”/”Treatment Works in Communities” feature article series. Or you could help affiliates seek local funding for their individual campaign-related special events.

The Time is Now

Since its founding, NAMI North Carolina has never faced a more critical juncture in its life as an organization. Never before has more attention been focused on North Carolina’s mental health care system. Never before has the need for reform been more apparent or better defined and documented. Never before has treatment had more to offer people with mental illnesses—if only they had ready access to a system of care capable of providing that treatment.

If NAMI North Carolina is to seize this unprecedented opportunity to make positive, lasting changes to the state’s mental health care system, the organization must marshal the considerable resources needed to strengthen its programs, develop new member benefits and support its ambitious “Treatment Works” awareness campaign. To be the leader it ought to be, NAMI North Carolina must have the wherewithal to act like a leader and to command the resources needed to speak out on behalf of people with mental illnesses in a clear, strong, unified voice.