Mental Health Today Volunteers Needed

Mental Health Today can always use your skills to help achieve our mission which is helping others who have mental health disorders, their families and the people treating them. See our Mission Statement.

These are some of the following areas where assistance is needed:

Email Volunteers

Becoming an email volunteer and answering letters from consumers and families who are looking for support and understanding. You are free to pick whatever health disorder you choose as long as you feel comfortable in your knowledge in that area. 

If you have the disorder yourself, believe me you have a large understanding of what it's like to have that disorder(s).

Or perhaps you are a family member and feel you can assist other families in their struggles. 

We welcome mental health professionals who are able to take the time to answer some of these wonderful folks.

You are free to set your own hours and answer as many or as few letters as you like. If you don't have time for a new letter you can refer them to another email volunteer just by looking at the list.

How to become an email volunteer:

• a) First if you are a consumer you must be on the road to recovery. You can't have self mutilated for at least 6 months and are currently not experiencing a significant clinical depression or any major symptoms of your disorder. We ask this not only so that you can assist people but also to protect you. This kind of job can be a trigger for many people and may worsen their condition. We need folks who have a stable life.

If you have been selected for this job, please report anything that may be contrary to your own recovery.

• b) Send me a brief biography - a few paragraphs or so letting people know a little about you. You can include your age, your disorder(s),  if you are a family member, etc. If you would like to use examples, take a look at the other posted volunteers here.

• c) Be sure to include the email address you want to have posted for folks to write you. I encourage many of you to get an additional online email account for this purpose such as yahoo, hotmail, excite, etc.

Bulletin Board Moderator or Director

This would include checking whatever particular boards you want to cover and making sure no one is being flamed or that nothing inappropriate is posted. Also making sure that other bulletin board owners don't use our boards as an advertisement for their board. 

A board member mentioning another site or board that has been helpful to them in addition to their discussion is fine and helpful. However I am referring to people that just come in, post their website or board and leave. Those messages need to be deleted. We are not a place for advertisements of any form. Our boards are there for real people to discuss real issues.

Contact me if you are interested.

Leader for Email Support Groups

Some Mental Health Today Email Support Groups need a leader to lead the group. If you are interested, please contact me.

Literary Work Contributions

Your articles about any subject related to mental health are welcome. Also on some sites you are able to send your story in to be posted.

Your material can be posted on the website as well as the newsletter . Mental Health Today is adamant about preserving your privacy and material that is posted is anonymous or given a false name unless you specifically ask that your name be posted with your material. See the Privacy Policy. 

Borderline Personality Disorder Today Advocacy Program

Presently an advocacy program to assist those with borderline personality disorder is coming into place. We are presently taking applications for advocates and consumers who are in need of advocacy. We are not looking for perfect people to be advocates, only someone who is on the road to recovery, is stable in their lives and wanting to help others.

If you are interested in becoming either an advocate or a client, feel free to contact the Director of the program.

For more information about this program click here.

Mental Health Today Crisis Hotline

I put together a program many years ago to assist people in crisis as I was receiving letters myself that were more than I could handle. I hired the most wonderful person to direct it - Susan Stanley. 

Again we need stable people, not perfect to either answer phone calls from people  in crisis and/or take their emails. If you opt to take phone calls, your address cannot be accessible in any way.

This is a very stressful volunteer position and carries a great deal of responsibility. If someone has threatened suicide outright you MUST contact law enforcement in their area and report this. I am not referring to those people who mildly mention suicide but those who are actively suicidal.

You will be given a training packet that I have written and you have full support from Susan. Susan is not a trained mental health professional but she is supervised by myself as an M.S.W.

For more information, click here.

Interpreters 

For those who speak any other language besides English, your services to take any of the webpages on the site of your choosing and send in the page interpreted. This will assist MANY people. Your interpreted information will be posted. 

In the past I received a great deal of letters from people offering to do this and most of the time, though they were sincere in wanting to help, never did interpret any material. Thus, feel free as I said to take any page or pages you want and send me the interpretation. Mental Health Today is very large and I just cannot pick one page so rather than asking me, choose what page you would like to do. 

You can send in your interpreted pages to myself here. 

Other Information

I get many letters from wonderful people offering their services for any position. Honestly I don't have the time to answer every letter explaining what services are needed so I have provided this page. 

Please don't send a letter stating that you would like to volunteer your services unless you mention directly what volunteer position you want to do. 

The time spent for each position is up to you. There is no set time you need to take from your life. Offer the time that you have and that is all we expect.

If you would like to assist with an area that is not mentioned on this page, feel free to run it by me.

There are no paid positions at this time.

Thanks so much. Your services are greatly appreciated. 

Warmly,

Patty E. Fleener M.S.W.