Schizophrenia & Psychosis Action Alliance

SARDAA advocates for increased awareness that schizophrenia-related brain development disorders are physiological; there is hope - treatment works and must be provided. We provide support groups in an empathic environment for individuals who are diagnosed and their loved ones. The support groups provide encouragement to collaborate in treatment and foster recovery.

We are working to reclassify schizophrenia as a brain illness so people with schizophrenia will be treated like people with other neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and we can eliminate incarceration and homelessness.

We are developing a campaign for media to pledge to change the narrative and recognize that schizophrenia-related illnesses are brain disorders and stop using derogatory terms and misinformation.

Ultimately, we work to improve lives affected by schizophrenia-related brain illnesses.

The Schizophrenia Alliance Coordinator reaches out to other national organizations to encourage the initiation of new support groups utilizing the SA protocols. The coordinator maintains contact with the groups leaders after mentoring them through their start-up and encourages maintenance of their groups. We need to provide SA workshops to help train and encourage new SA leaders throughout the USA.

We are offering a Doctoral student the opportunity to study the effectiveness of the SARDAA Health Storylines app bundled with transportation for their dissertation. Some funding sources have been identified, but more are needed and we will continue to research for more sources with our fund development team.

We are researching how other organizations have strategized changing classification of their disease and increasing the access to treatment. We are seeking funding for planning and implementation of a signed pledge.

We have new guest speakers for our conference call groups to help diagnosed individuals and caregivers learn of new tools, research and coping with their unique challenges.

We have campaign for media to pledge to change the narrative and recognize that schizophrenia-related illnesses are brain disorders and stop using derogatory terms and misinformation.

We have a art installation Hearing Voice of Support website to share videos of those living with schizophrenia and caregivers who share their stories to bring more awareness. The visiting art installation has been located in NYC and on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C.

We have several layers of capable volunteers, including professionals in the area of psychiatry, fund development, administration and lived experience. We have seed funding and potential funding for our projects and potential doctoral students to consider the pilot study.

SA has been in existence since 1985 and has grown to include other countries and the conference call groups have been successfully lead by capable SA leaders. We have developed training materials for workshops that have been successful. We have support group member manuals .

New collaborative organizations express the desire to join with us to advocate for the changes elaborated.

We have developed a great user friendly, helpful app. We have outlined the program to be implemented and studied.
We have developed many collaborations.
We have increased national and international status.
We have committees researching strategies for changing the classification of schizophrenia-related brain disorders into the classification of neurology.
We have an excellent volunteer professional grant writing team.
We are very frugal when securing vendors and materials.
We need to strengthen the Board of Directors so they are capable of securing more funding.
We have a Communications Committee to drive the media campaign.
We need to secure general funding as well as project funding and educational funding sources.