The Not Crazy© Educational Initiative
Not Crazy© is designed to help educate teenagers in the general population who may currently have, or may develop, psychiatric problems.
This program has the following aims:
- To provide resources to people working with teenagers in any capacity
- Help kids and parents identify early warning signs;
- Reduce barriers to effective psychiatric care;
- Help kids, parents, and teachers identify and use school and community resources;
- To educate students, educators, administrators, and parents about culturally responsive care and culturally normative issues in psychiatry;
- Reduce stigma around psychiatric issues;
- To help teenagers talk to parents and other adults about these issues;
- Decrease the duration of untreated symptoms by accelerating at-risk youth’s access to care prior to, or in the earliest stages of, illness onset.
Funded by the Foundation for Mental Health, the curriculum is offered free of charge and is presented in a web-based and CD-ROM format, to be used as a teaching tool in many settings with various audiences: classrooms and educational settings, as a resource guide for teenagers and their families, and as a stand-alone source for comprehensive mental illness information. This program has been developed in consultation with consumers, teenagers, mental health professionals, and educators.
For more information on Not Crazy, contact Martha Lawless.
