Greg Paffhouse, CEO
Northern Lakes Community Mental Health
This Board of Directors’ adopted Vision – enhanced by our
Mission and our Values – daily guides our organizational decision-making and is the cornerstone of Northern Lakes Community Mental Health (NLCMH) Communications and Public Relations (CPR) activity. We believe our system of care must create desired and positive outcomes for all persons served, promote the elimination of stigma in cooperation with welcoming communities, and meet owner expectations. To help this happen we believe that our respective communities and key stakeholders must accept and treat consumers with respect, dignity and compassion and promote community membership.
Beginning in the late 1990’s we realized that we would not be successful in creating desired outcomes without increasing our attention to and expanding resources to support what is now often referred to as Social Marketing. Essentially this is the application of traditional, commercial marketing techniques to social issues. Examples include designated drivers, wearing seat belts, and being proactive with breast cancer screening.
Much like traditional marketing we are interested in “selling a product.” Mental health is fundamental to overall health and well being; our product is improved individual and societal outcomes. Broadly, our social marketing seeks to reduce stigma, increase partnership opportunities, increase awareness, demonstrate value, and build capacity. We have incorporated several social marketing outcomes into our NLCMH Strategic Plan:
· Establish and maintain effective relationships to support or accelerate achievement of the NLCMH Vision, Mission, and Ends and promote the value of the Michigan public mental health system.
· Information about illnesses, effective treatments, and NLCMH services will be readily available to consumers and families in our communities.
· Community members recognize that persons with mental health conditions are valuable and contributing members of society.
Leadership is provided by our CPR committee, which develops and implements a multiyear board of directors adopted plan which seeks “to change beliefs through changed experiences”. Research supports that statement, and specifically with regard to stigma shows that the most effective strategies involve the target audience(s) having direct contact with people with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities. This is all about building relationships (“Connections”). Specifically, our goals include stigma reduction, normalizing health seeking behaviors, communicating about access, and increasing community’s prevention capacity. Positively we have been able to expand our anti-stigma work through federal block grant funding provided by the Michigan Department of Community Health.
Our Target Audience
Below is our target audience “bull’s-eye” to illustrate the market segments we try to reach — note that consumers are in the center (always!) AND in the outer edge of the circle we seek to influence with our social marketing efforts.
We have made it a priority to incorporate persons with lived experience, community partners, and stakeholders in multiple activities. Our social marketing efforts seek to directly involve consumers and our various target audiences in a variety of ways ranging from consumer/staff partnerships in providing community presentations; to providing consumers’ individual stories via photobiography display, book, or movie; in-depth radio interviews; hard-hitting “alternative” news outlet features; front page newspaper stories; and major community “mixer” events which show the multi-dimensionality of people served, such as movie nights or art shows.
Our consumer partners are essential in events such as the movie night at the Houghton Lakes Pines Theatre, Traverse City Library art show and Inside Out Gallery, Walk-A-Mile Rally, groups meeting with lawmakers, county commissioner presentations, recovery learning communities and Recovery Council, and community health fairs.
Relationships
We have found the media - print, radio, and television across our six rural counties– to be interested partners who are open to mental health related stories. This has worked both ways, especially once relationships, usually with a reporter, are established – our reaching out to them and their reaching out to us to assist with a story. To us relationships are essential and reciprocal. They often take time to build but also can develop quickly when an opportunity is presented. We work hard to never turn down an opportunity to assist a media member. We work to take each opportunity, including those more problem focused, as a way to develop relationships and to work toward our Vision.
For example, last year we purchased airtime for our Public Service Announcements created by Suttons Bay High School. We spent time developing relationships and connections with the media sales representatives. They each donated a generous amount of time (worth thousands) because of their own personal connections to our issues through their family members or themselves affected by some behavioral health concern. Truly 1 in 5 is affected — whether we are aware of it or not.
Media Perspectives
Previously, Linda Stephan, Interlochen Public Radio shared that it is up to her as a journalist to find her own stories, so having relationships with key organization leaders is important to her as a continuing source of relevant stories - making finding the stories easier, and thus making her job easier. In preparation for this article I asked Linda and Kayla Kiley, Cadillac News, their perspective on several questions.
1. What is in it for the media?
Kayla - The media’s main concern is getting people the information they want/need. The media wants to sell more papers/get more viewers… and they want an interesting way to tell a story. My main concern is getting the word out to people that they are not alone — they are not freaks because they have a mental problem. I want people to feel comfortable with the idea of seeking and receiving help.
Note: Kayla shared that she may be unique in the case that she sees herself as more of a mental health advocate, because she interned at Mental Health America (in the media relations department) in Washington, D.C. A stroke of luck for us! Much like others we have worked with she has relationships with others who have mental health histories – the 1 in 5.
Linda - As a reporter I try to be a conduit to the community. Everyone benefits from good, thoughtful discussion of the issues - whether it’s access to care, stigma, budget constraints, etc. An informed community means informed voters and a better understanding of mental illness in general. By making yourself available to the media, and by keeping your systems and processes open to scrutiny, you not only help lift a shroud around mental illness, you add to the quality of the reports that go out to the community. As a government operation, you also have a duty to be as open as possible (without violating privacy) about your operations/constraints, and even problem areas.
2. How do people get your participation and why do you continue to get our stories out?
Kayla - Given my mental health background, I came up with the idea (Note: this is one of the reasons we want to be seen as a local resource). But a way to increase media awareness is to continually send us press releases. Say it’s Mental Health Month — I believe that’s in May — let us know. Maybe even give us story ideas. We look for stories about REAL people. We want REAL people telling their stories. Real people are reading/watching the news, and they can relate to real people telling a story about a mental health illness. It pulls in reader/viewer interest, compared to something that reads like a psychology textbook. The human interest aspect of the story is very drawing, and you’ll get a lot more attention if you have a press release giving a little story about someone who is willing to openly talk about their mental health illness and recovery process. If you build up a good relationship with a reporter at a newspaper chances are you’ll see more articles about upcoming events, etc. Keep the communication going. If you get a call from a reporter about a mental health topic, call that reporter back when you have another good story idea. We’re always looking for good stories. Maybe make a point to give a newspaper/TV station a story idea once a month, or once every other month.
Linda - Reporters simply want to tell a compelling story. There are three critical elements that help us do that: 1. A story involves real people. Northern Lakes talked with its consumers and invited them to be open with me, to share their stories. 2. Reporters need to know they’re not telling only one part of the story. You need to be willing to admit your faults/constraints. 3. We like to be kept informed of any changes, new ideas/plans, etc. We don’t often like to tell the same story over and over again, but whenever there’s something new, or a new issue or question, there’s an opportunity again for community discussion.
3. How has it affected the community?
Kayla - Through telling the story of a real, local woman’s struggles with bi-polar disorder, I believe if nothing else, it increased awareness about mental health disorders. There may even be less of a stigma because of it. However, I don’t fully know. I think you might be more aware of the effects… maybe someone read the article and decided to come to CMH. I would like to think it’s helped someone directly, indirectly, or maybe will help them later in life.
4. What kind of feedback do you or they receive to document community reaction/acceptance/rejection?
Kayla - Sometimes I’ll get e-mails or letters letting me know what people thought of a story, but I haven’t received any feedback on stories I’ve written about mental health. Well, I did receive e-mail from a past co-worker at Mental Health America, who enjoyed the story! But take note, I’ve never received any negative feedback about a MH story!
Linda - On the feedback question: I hosted a call-in show one morning where some CMH clients talked about living with mental illness. I had several calls - people asking how to listen again, or how they could get a copy for someone else to listen. I also have a rather personal story: that evening, I sat with a group of friends over dinner, and for the first time we talked about mental illness. Almost everyone at the table either struggled with their own mental health, or had a close family member who has/does. It’s something we might never have talked about otherwise, and I think several people were glad to find they weren’t alone.
The Power of the Internet
Our agency web site (northernlakescmh.org) has become an additional remarkable resource and vehicle for our communications. Last year we “updated” our website and have continued to prioritize its development. As a result of this update we experienced a significant increase in the number of “hits” last October (from 58,709 in September to 111,507 in October) when we created a Virtual Recovery Center including daily recovery stories told by persons with lived experience. In FY 07/08 through July our website has had 1,534,442 hits – an average 153,444 hits/month (our high water mark so far was 203,454 hits in June 2008!).
Measures of Success
We have historically tracked and maintained a portfolio of published information. We actively seek community input regarding products such as our annual reports (mailed in all county newspapers), ensure and track activity across all counties, and monitor how well we have implemented the CPR plan strategies including what we have done for all target audiences.
Later this year the Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) Center for Business and Industry will complete a fourth telephone survey for us. We have chosen to measure three factors related to stigma: 1) perceptions of fear/dangerousness, 2) avoidance behaviors, and 3) willingness to help others. We also ask where people would first look for information on a mental health issue, if they personally know anyone who has received treatment for a mental illness or developmental disability, how aware they are of NLCMH and how they would rate our services, and their perceptions about community services, mental health parity, and effectiveness of treatment.
Beyond gaining community input on these issues we want to see if there have been changes in perception as a result of our social marketing work especially in regards to stigma. While difficult to measure we see this as one means to gain a better understanding of local perceptions and also as a means to gather new information to guide our future work.
