Audiences

OpenMindsOpenDoors is focused on creating awareness and reducing stigma and discrimination for all Pennsylvanians.  However, each year the campaign focuses on a key audience to help us achieve those goals. Strategy, goals and materials are created for that audience.  Work with each audience continues through each year with crucial support from our local partners who keep momentum.

Currently, the campaign is working with employers, providers, and legislators.  Here is some more information on what we are doing with each audience.

Employers 

Securing and sustaining meaningful employment is obviously beneficial to the person who has a mental illness. What may be less obvious is that including these individuals in the workforce can be tremendously beneficial to the companies employing them. Each year, American businesses lose $70 billion in productivity and absenteeism due to untreated mental health disorders. At the same time experts acknowledge that work is a key factor in supporting mental wellness and warding off mental illness.

In October of 2002, we created our Employer Guide (Mental Health in the Workplace: an investment in human capital) in response to a need and feedback from human resource directors across the state.  This guide is part of our overall strategy to reach the largest employers in the state - and eventually the smallest employers in the state - and help them educate their employees about mental health issues.  The guide outlines specific workplace initiatives that reach our goals, but also help an employer reach their goals - of being productive.  Our goals for this audience are to reduce stigma in the workplace, increase opportunities for people with mental illnesses to gain employment, and positively affect a company's bottomline.

We are currently conducting outreach to the top 100 businesses in the state.

Providers

(Mental health) providers are also employers.  Our campaign works with providers as we would with employers.  As organizations that provide rehabilitation services and supports for people with mental illnesses (and know that recovery happens) we work with providers to educate their own employees on mental health issues, initiate programs that discourage stigma and discrimination, and ultimately to hire people with mental illnesses. 

A version of the general Employer Guide is also available for this audience. In May 2003, we interviewed 68 major providers across the state after receipt of the Employer Guide.  Twenty-four providers, representing 40,000 employees in the state, were moving in a new direction or doing more as a result of our efforts. We are currently profiling exemplary providers in the state that can serve as examples for others to follow.

Legislators

State legislators are experts on many topics.  And, they communicate with their constituents on a variety of topics. In 2004, we began outreach to this audience, positioning ourselves as a resource on any mental health issue. Through our partner network, OpenMindsOpenDoors is in every part of the state.

We are currently working to obtain signatures to our statement of support from legislators and continue to respond to any information they may need.  (Click here to see which legislators have signed.)