Active Minds

 ACTIVE MINDS FOUNDER RECEIVES ‘ERASING THE STIGMA’ LEADERSHIP AWARD

Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services Honors Alison Malmon

May 7, 2010 - Active Minds’ founder, Alison Malmon, was honored with a Leadership Award for her efforts with Active Minds at the 14^th Annual Erasing the Stigma Leadership Awards banquet on April 30^th at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA.  This year’s awards focused on the mental health of youth and recognized Malmon for her work founding and leading Active Minds, Inc., the nation's only organization dedicated solely to empowering young people to improve the mental health climate on college campuses across North America.

"We chose Alison Malmon as a Leadership Award recipient due to the significant work she has done to dispel myths and prejudices and advance the public’s understanding of mental illness,” stated Kita Curry, Ph.D., President and CEO of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services. “As founder of Active Minds, her commitment to increase student awareness of mental health, provide information and resources, and encourage students to seek help as soon as it is needed has helped change the culture on many school campuses throughout the United States."

Malmon was recognized alongside two other honorees at the event, Ross Szabo and Gary E. Knell.  Szabo is the former Director for Outreach for the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign and author of Behind Happy Faces: What Young Adults Need to Know about Mental Health. He has reached over a million high school and college students with his personal story about mental health speaking with the Campaign’s renowned speakers bureau, The Heard.  Active Minds acquired The Heard when the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign came to a close in late 2009.  Gary E. Knell is the president and CEO of Sesame Workshop.  He received the Beatrice Stern Media Award for the Sesame Workshop's bilingual multimedia initiatives that use the power of Sesame Street's characters to help families address ever major stressor of the last decade, including September 11th, Hurricane Katrina, unemployment, and war.  Sesame Workshop's "Talk, Listen, Connect" program has helped millions of military families cope with the visible and invisible suffering caused by deployments, homecomings and injuries.

Malmon joins a prestigious list of past honorees including Rosalynn Carter, Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, Dr. David Satcher, Terry Bradshaw, and Larry King.  The first 'Erasing the Stigma' honoree was Tipper Gore, whose candor about her own depression opened up a national dialogue.

Kita Curry, Ph.D., President and CEO of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, Gary E. Knell, President and CEO of Sesame Workshop, and Alison Malmon, Founder and Executive Director of Active Minds, Inc. at the 'Erasing the Stigma' Leadership Awards.

About Active Minds, Inc.: Active Minds is the leading voice in college student mental health and supports a rapidly growing network of over 250 student-run chapters on colleges and universities throughout the United States and Canada. All chapters work towards one goal: to create a campus culture where students feel safe and encouraged to speak openly about mental health and seek help. A national non-profit headquartered in Washington D.C., Active Minds takes a grassroots approach of changing the conversation about mental health one campus at a time.