Many of us who have ended up in the system have lost a sense of our own personal power. I assure you, the quickest, easiest way to reclaim your personal power is to simply decide, right here, right now, the following affirmations:
I am going to take control of my own mental health
I am going to take control of my own personal health.
I am going to take control of my own life.
I am going to take control of my own choices in life.
I am going to take control of fulfilling my own hopes and dreams.
I am going to take control of my own destiny in life.
The members of CLF seek to empower each other and our fellow consumers in our communities through education, advocacy, meetings, workshops, trainings and outreach. We are have our own outreach team that goes throughout the city of Washington, DC, to introduce who we are, what we do, how we can work together to support one another to address issues of concerns by consumers, and to let consumers know about other organizations out there that can help them.
Consumer Leadership Forum began in January of 2006 and has met ever since on a monthly basis. We have started several task forces and now work with multiple coalitions of lawyers, other advocates, and service providers who share our goals and vision of a reformed mental health system.
Our work groups are as follows:
Our Outreach Team is going out in the community to talk to consumers, organizations, providers and shelters to address the many issues of mental illness. We have several organizations/providers that we meet with monthly. We talk about what it is like dealing with mental illness, how we manage to get on the path of recovery, and what we do to help stay that way. We also do presentations at meetings, conferences and workshops.
Peer Support meets to talk about how we can help support our fellow consumers and help them to get back into society. We come up with a plan on how to reach consumers in the group and encourage them to get involved by helping themselves. We strongly encourage consumers to become independent by setting goals.
Our Housing task force is working in conjunction with the Department's Housing Advocacy Council to address housing issues, attend housing meetings and work on how we can address the housing problem, not only with consumers but the homeless population as well.
Our Crisis Care task force is working on improving the use of the Access Help Line to place consumers in crisis beds sooner, as well as having more crisis beds and crisis intervention services. This task force also advocates for consumers to receive education about how medications affect their health, and how to recognize the symptoms of their illness.