DIVERSITY

The Dallas metropolitan area is a culturally diverse community.  NAMI Dallas strives to reach out to diverse populations groups to provide information about mental illness and ways in which NAMI Dallas can be helpful.  Here are some of the multicultural activites of NAMI Dallas:

• Volunteers attend community health fairs for multicultural populations.
• NAMI Dallas brochures and membership applications are printed in Spanish, Vietnamese, and English.
• The brochure for Visions for Tomorrow educational program is printed in English and Spanish. 
• Spanish speaking volunteer teachers have taught their first Family-to-Family Educational Program in Spanish.
• NAMI Dallas is committed to increasing its capacity to provide educational programs and support groups for Spanish speaking residents of North Texas.
• Spanish speaking volunteers discuss mental illness and NAMI Dallas' programs and services on Spanish speaking radio programs.
• NAMI Dallas information and referral services provide bi-lingual assistance to Spanish speaking callers.

Multicultural Action Center Resources - NAMI (National)

National NAMI's Multicultural Action Center (MAC) contains excellent materials for multicultural populations. 

People of color face life-threatening disparties  in access to high quality mental healthcare.  In response to this national crisis, NAMI created its Multicultural Action Center.  This Center works to focus attention on system reform to ensure access to culturally competent services and treatment for all Americans and to help and support families of color who are dealing with mental illness.  The Center provides the following kinds of online information and services:

Resources:  Find fact sheets, manuals, and other informational materials about mental health issues specific to Latino, African American, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and American Indian communities. The Center contains a resource library with writings that have been done on mental health care for diverse communities.  As new findings are made available, the resource library adds them to its online collection. In addition, the Center has developed materials in other languages about mental illness, treatment options, recovery and support.  Materials can be found in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Italian.

Multicultural Action Center Newsletter: Read the bi-monthly Multicultural Action Center Newsletter, with the latest news about multicultural and international mental health activities. NEW - Avanzamos! NAMI's quarterly Spanish newsletter.  Order hard copies at www. nami.org/store or sign up for the electronic version at www.nami.org/subscribe.

Cultural Competence:  Inform yourself about cultural competence in mental health care.

Public Policy Platform: NAMI makes cultural diversity a priority in the policy platform.

International and Mulicultural Forum:  Join the discussion about multicultural issues, meet people from diverse backgrounds and share your opinion on issues related to culture and ethnicity.

Access this information at www.nami.org

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