Mental health care is EVERYONE’S concern.

Little Orange Fish was founded to support the premise that every individual can benefit from and deserves access to quality mental health care.

The vision is that through research and education, better quality mental health care with a greater continuity of care can be made accessible to all. Realizing this vision will do much more than save lives by reducing acts of violence and self harm. It will also greatly enhance the quality of life for the tens of millions in the US, and the hundreds of millions world wide, who suffer in silence from a variety of emotional and mental health issues.

For any community and ultimately society to be healthy and to thrive, it requires that the individuals who make up those communities be healthy, irrespective their roles and perceived contributions.

You may have noticed that while I’ve spoken to mental health and health in general, I have not made any distinction between physical and mental health – and I will not. That is a false distinction that continues to be perpetuated even in current medical text books as well as in recent relatively progressive health care legislation. The brain, which functions entirely through mechanical, electrical and chemical processes, is absolutely a physiological- a “physical” aspect of what we are and is inarguably a critical aspect of our health. In fact it is the most complex physical component of our make-up and is inextricably linked to every other major component of our bodies through electrical and chemical processes.

The fact that the brain’s physical processes dictate behavior and are influenced and modified, not only by physical injury and what we ingest, inject or inhale, but also by what we perceive through our senses, should not be reason to discount the brain’s – the mind’s- medical relevance. And it certainly shouldn’t be reason for us to expect any less attention be given to it by the medical community.

The Little Orange Fish mission is to work with the research, education and medical communities to ensure that:

• There is greater emphasis put on medically relevant mental health research,
• The knowledge from this research is put into medical practice
• Every individual can feel comfortable seeking essential mental health care and
• Every individual can feel confident that they can get timely access to high quality mental health care.

A strong community starts with healthy individuals and good health starts with a healthy mind.