NAMI (National Alliance On Mental Illness) Black Hawk County

NAMI Black Hawk County provides advocacy, education, and mutual support for people with mental illness and their families. We work for an improved quality of life for people with mental illness and elimination to the discrimination surrounding the disease.

NAMI Black Hawk County works to improve the quality of life for people with mental illness and their families. It is a nonprofit, grassroots mental health organization founded by families affected by mental illness, determined to fight stigma, and to create a system of recovery for individuals living with mental illness. Due to the stigma, shame, and discrimination associated with the disease, many people with mental illness and their families feel isolated from their community. We reach out to make them feel included and supported. Our free classes, educational presentations, and support groups provide a caring, supportive environment. Along with one staff member, the facilitators for our classes and support groups are trained volunteer family members or people with mental illness who have learned to live well with their illness. We promote understanding about mental illnesses so that people recognize these as biologically based diseases of the brain. Mental illnesses are more common than diabetes or heart disease. One in five adults experiences a diagnosable mental health disorder in a given year and one in four families has a family member with mental illness. Our work is an important addition to other professional assistance. We strengthen the help people receive from psychiatrists and counselors by allowing people to share information, receive support, and learn about effective coping skills. In the late 1970s, two women met at the University of Wisconsin who were mothers of adult children with schizophrenia. They were looking for support as well as ways to improve the mental health system. They organized with others nationwide and created a new organization. Some board members of a state organization, the Iowa Schizophrenia Association, attended this new organization's first national conference in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1979. The name of the organization was then "Alliance for the Mentally Ill," with the acronym of AMI, meaning "friend" from the French. Since another company had copyrighted "AMI"