NAMI MERCER NJ INC
1235 Whitehorse-Mercerville Rd 303, Hamilton, NJ 08619 namimercer.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: NAMI Mercer NJ, Inc. is a local affiliate in NJ's Capital region of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the nation's largest grassroots mental health organization. Nami Mercer NJ, Inc. listens, leads, educates, and advocates, empowering families and individuals affected by mental illness to build lives of quality and respect free of stigma and discrimination.NAMI Mercer, Inc. relies on the talents of a small paid staff and a large team of volunteers to fulfill its mission.

We serve as a local affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in NJ's Capital region. We listen, lead, educate, and advocate, empowering families and individuals affected by mental illness to build lives of quality and respect free of stigma and discrimination.

The NAMI Mercer Helpline fielded roughly 600 inquiries in 2019, with staff and volunteers providing a compassionate ear, as well as information and resources to help callers better cope with the challenges posed by mental illness. As part of NAMI Mercers educational efforts, two Family-to-Family classes were offered, empowering families to better understand mental illness, access effective treatment, develop coping strategies, and better advocate for loved ones; a multi-session workshop on Overcoming Social Anxiety was offered in partnership with Find Your Voice, guiding participants to build greater confidence in social interactions; and NAMI Mercer hosted 24 community education programs, including our Summer Expressive Arts Program, reaching more than 700 people. Inspiration and practical skill development was offered to participants at our annual wellness conference, Harvest of Hope. To support families of adults living with mental illness, we continued our partnership with Intensive Family Support Services (IFSS) under Oaks Integrated Care to host weekly support groups and provided space for IFSS Counselors to meet with families at no charge. We launched a second site for our Parent Support Network, a monthly sharing/support forum for caregivers of youth under age 24. To lend support to individuals who are themselves struggling with mental health challenges, we offered NAMI Connection, a weekly recovery support group, that enables participants to engage in productive discussion and enhance their coping skills as part of a supportive community. Our weekly Hearing Voices Support Group enabled those who hear voices or experience other unusual sensory perceptions to have a forum for sharing and growing from their experiences. Members of our Just Friends social support group had opportunities to engage in 63 social events with a view to helping them form friendships and have fun, reducing the social isolation that is so common among those with mental health conditions.We also forged a partnership with the Reach Out, Speak Out Wellness Center to grow this group.NAMI Mercer touched the lives of more than 2600 people at community outreach events, sharing information about our programs and services, raising awareness, and building a more supportive, inclusive community. We forged multiple community partnerships, including one with the County to promote a Stigma-Free Mercer, and further expanded prevention efforts by increasing public awareness about mental health and reducing the stigma that poses a significant barrier to those in need of treatment and support. NAMI Mercer offered 35 Ending the Silence presentations, a NAMI National signature school-based program with three tracks: one for students, one for families and one for school personnel, generating open dialogue with more than 1700 educators, caregivers and students. We believe that intervention with youth will have a lasting positive impact not just on their lives, but on the way people overall view mental health. We continued to offer In Our Own Voice presentations to community groups, corporations , hospitals, and maintained a Speakers Bureau, through which we can offer customized presentations to meet requests from specific groups. NAMIWALKS Mercer County brought together close to a thousand people to raise awareness about mental health and critical funds to support our programs and services. Despite pouring rain, it proved to be the highest grossing WALK in our history.NAMI Mercer has a robust volunteer program and many individuals with mental health challenges come to us seeking a supportive environment where they can rebuild their confidence, improve their skills, gain experience and many actually find their way back to the workforce and/or decide volunteerism is a way they can make a meaningful contribution to society. These generous volunteers logged close to 8,000 hours of service in 2019. We also mentored 22 undergraduate and 2 graduate student interns, representing 9 different institutions of higher education.

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