Following a moral compass.

     It's fair to say that issues of mental health funding in this country continue to be a mountainous challenge for all involved; that boundaries and obligations shift; and that it sometimes seems the most neurotic patient within the system is the system itself.

     With these difficulties as a given, I have twice been invited to enter the scene; once on behalf of psychologists in Tennessee who wanted to build a case in support of prescriptive drug authority; the other at the closure of a mental health agency in North Carolina (New Vistas) which needed help with community relations as part of making the patient transition to new providers as seamless as possible.

     I enjoy the opportunity to take an advocacy position as a communicator when I believe in the position of the advocate and, in each of these extended projects, I felt that both clients were battling, without question, for the long-term well-being of the patient.

     In Tennessee, the legislature is mulling the question. In North Carolina, New Vistas was able to document what it experienced across its short history in a way that will unquestionably serve the state in its continuing trial-and-error efforts to reform and reinvigorate a challenged network of care.

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Moral Compass

Strategist and writer: Jay Fields
Designer (for Tennessee project): Dan Lipe