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What's New

Coming in October during Mental Health Awareness Week is our Community Event. NAMI Northern Illinois will host a speaker on a mental health issue. This year the speaker will be Marc Elliot. He has a presentation called “Don’t Judge a Book by its Noises”.

Two days after he was born, he was diagnosed with a rare birth defect called Hirschsprungs’s disease. His doctors discovered he had no working large intestine and barely any small intestines. After seven experiential surgeries and four years of being in and out of St. Louis Children’s Hospital, he survived his ailments, leaving him with a strong heart and unbreakable will. However, his medical challenges did not end there.

By the age of nine, he was diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome (TS), a neurological disorder that causes him to make involuntary motor and vocal tics.

In dealing with these personal challenges, he has gained uncommon insight into the power of perseverance as well as the importance of understanding other people’s differences.

Since graduating from high school, he has done extensive public speaking throughout the St. Louis area and is now taking his story to audiences across the country.

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