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The Brooklyn Mental Health Council's Public Education Committee has joined with the National Mental Health Voter Empowerment Project (NMHVEP) in order to register Brooklyn consumers of mental health services, educate them on issues that concern the mental health community and facilitate their voting. The Council is an advisory committee to the New York City Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Alcoholism Services and the Public Education Committee (P.E.C.) is one of the 15 subcommittees of the Council. The P.E.C. has been involved with issues of concern to consumers and providers of behavioral healthcare and saw the opportunity to empower people and help enable them to have more influence in assuring that their needs are better served.

Ken Steele, founder of the New York Mental Health Voter Empowerment Project met numerous times with both members of the Council and the P.E.C. to train parties interested in this program. As a result, Brookdale Hospital and Kingsboro Psychiatric Center have begun registering people with the Brooklyn Clubhouse also joining this effort. Additional sites are of course welcome. Invitations have also been made to representatives of the Board of Elections, League of Women Voters, National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) and lawyers as well as representatives of all local political parties to join in this endeavor as part of the currently forming Advisory Board.

D.A. Johnson of the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) has agreed to donate a computer so that people signing up with the project can be, with their consent, tracked and educated about the candidates running for office and involved in other activities of the program. NAMI was approached to possibly cosponsor a legislative breakfast in the fall and a planning subcommittee has been formed to organize this event.

Ken Steele emphasizes in his voter registration trainings that there is among legislators a very different view towards voting by the mentally ill than existed as little as seven years ago. In the early 90's a survey conducted by Mr. Steele elicited the information that a majority of legislators did not believe that people coping with mental illness should be encouraged to vote. Today, similar surveys reflect a very different attitude: legislators virtually unanimously believe the mentally ill should vote!

As we move towards this year's pivotal elections, registering people to vote, educating them on the issues, and facilitating their voting is of paramount importance, especially for the large, diverse community that lives in Brooklyn. For further information about this exciting program, please contact Mark Laster at 718-238-1961 or Will Farrell at 718-604-6351.