The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has several chapters across Southern California, with the Greater Los Angeles County (GLAC) chapter celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.
The organization has continued to provide numerous resources for the community, including recovery support groups and peer-to-peer education classes for both people with mental health conditions and their families. They also offer a free education program for parents, caregivers and other family members who provide care for youth with symptoms of mental illness.
Additionally, NAMI GLAC has what’s called the HOPE Warmline, a free, non-crisis support line where callers going through a difficult or stressful situation and are in need of someone to talk to are provided a confidential space to talk about their struggles and get resources.
This is different from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, as the organization doesn’t handle those calls, but if NAMI does get a call from someone in a mental health crisis, they do what’s called a “warm handoff,” where they get the caller connected to a 988 operator.
A study by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) released in April found that, between the launch of 988 in July 2022 and December 2024, suicide deaths among 15 to 23 year olds was 11% lower than what researchers expected.
Traute Winters, the CEO of the GLAC chapter, has been with the organization for close to five years now and has seen it grow “tremendously.” She said they’ve added peer support training, where people can go through an 80-hour certificate program.
This is a new area of mental health, Winters said, that has developed in the last couple of years. These peers are being hired by the LA County Department of Mental Health to work alongside mental health professionals at treatment centers.
“We also have our programs for middle and high school students, our Ending the Silence program, where we teach students about how to recognize the signs of mental illness in themselves or a friend and how to seek help or encourage a friend to seek help,” Winters said. “We have programs for all populations.”
Recently, NAMI GLAC has added more programming in different languages, including Mandarin, Filipino and Japanese, and for those in the LGBTQ+ community.
Winters stressed the importance of having culturally-relevant programming in LA County, where there are certain communities with a lot of stigma around the topic of mental health – particularly the Latino and Asian American communities. Having more diverse programming allows people from those communities to feel more comfortable coming forward and talking about their issues.
In a strange twist, though, she said that the COVID-19 pandemic helped in addressing that stigma, as people talking about their mental health became more and more common.
“Individuals, especially [from] the younger population, seem more comfortable talking about mental health,” Winters said. “My daughter is 23 and … with her age group, it was more normalized to talk about your mental health because so many young people do struggle with their mental health, especially during the pandemic.
“There’s still stigma, and it’s definitely prevalent in a lot of communities, especially immigrant communities,” Winters continued, “but I feel that people are more willing to talk about their mental health, and especially when you see celebrities … talking about their mental health. That gives people permission and it kind of normalizes it a little bit. So it’s really good when you know people who are looked up to in the community talk about it.”
Annual Mental Health Festival
And speaking of celebrities, that’s who Angelenos can expect to appear at this year’s annual NAMIWalks Mental Health Festival on May 16 at LA State Historic Park.
Jordan Chiles, an Olympic gymnast and a mental health advocate, will be the keynote speaker at the event and will share her own journey. In a memoir released last year, Chiles recounted her unhealthy relationship with food and the verbal and emotional abuse she endured from a former coach that led to her having suicidal thoughts.
“The National Alliance on Mental Illness is a critical champion for individuals and families affected by mental illness,” Chiles said in a statement. “I look forward to working closely with NAMI GLAC to continue the movement to destigmatize mental illness and save lives.”
As the name of the event would suggest, the festival opens with a 3K walk, after which attendees can check out the various resource booths and activities. These include mindfulness and meditation workshops, coloring books for kids, a costume contest and dance therapy.
As NAMI GLAC holds more events for Mental Health Awareness Month, which can be found on its website, Winters emphasized just how vital organizations like this are to the community and how they’ve helped so many people, herself included.
“A lot of times, people come to us in crisis, and we’re able to help them navigate and get into the system,” Winters said. “It’s hard to navigate mental health sometimes because there is a shortage of resources. There aren’t enough mental health professionals in our country, so we kind of bridge that gap while people are getting into treatment.”
The HOPE Warmline is available six days a week, Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It can be reached at (818) 208-1801.
For more information on NAMI GLAC, visit https://namiglac.org/.