<p><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) will conduct its annual legislative conference January 30 - February 1, 1998, at the Arlington Hilton Hotel.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that affects approximately two million Americans today.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">NAMI praises the U.S. Department of Justice for agreeing to a plea arrangement in the prosecution of Theodore Kaczynski. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">While people must be held responsible for their actions, we believe the death penalty is </span><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">never</span><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;"> appropriate for a defendant suffering from schizophrenia or other serious brain disorders.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">As Americans ring in the New Year tonight, they will usher in a new era of health coverage for those suffering from severe mental illnesses. The Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 will take effect at the stroke of midnight, allowing millions of Americans to break free from decades of unfair discrimination. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Thanks to a new generation of atypical antipsychotic drug therapies, millions of Americans suffering from severe brain disorders can lead more independent lives today without the devastating physical side effects of older medications, reports the fall issue of The Decade of the Brain, a quarterly science-based publication of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI). </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">As expected, the regulations implementing the federal Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 were jointly issued by the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury in today’s Federal Register.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) today lauded the Clinton Administration for standing behind a landmark law that ends at least some health insurance discrimination against millions of Americans with severe mental illnesses. The White House is expected to release a formal decision sometime next week.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">Many of the 18 million Americans who live with severe depression suffer in silence because of the stigma attached to mental illness. That silence is broken in "Dead Blue: Surviving Depression," a new HBO documentary that chronicles the lives of three people suffering from depression and their families.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.7999992370605px;">The American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP), the nation's leading charity watchdog, awarded the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) an A-plus rating for its cost-effective charitable spending and fundraising practices. NAMI was one of only 10 groups throughout the country that received an A-plus rating out of a field of 340 nonprofit organizations.</span></p>
NAMI HelpLine is available M-F, 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. ET. Call 800-950-6264,
text “helpline” to 62640, or chat online. In a crisis, call or text 988 (24/7).