Bender Leadership Academy

The bender leadership academy conducts the mary brougher mental health initiative, which works to help individuals build a mental fitness routine and become mental health advocates. The initiative provides mental fitness training in the following ways (1) to become empowered to talk about mental health, (2) to engage in healthy mind habits that build skills in self-compassion, coping, and resiliency, (3) to learn to identify and understand emotions and what they tell us, and (4) to explore where thoughts come from and how to process them in a healthy way. The initiative also teaches individuals about mental health advocacy in the following ways: (1) to understand what it means to be an advocate, (2) to learn about current civil rights issues for people with mental health disabilities, (3) to hear presentations from community partners about mental health advocacy, and (4) to explore actions that youth advocates can take to bring about change that addresses stigma of mental health. The initiative launched the #notashamed campaign to reduce stigma around mental health disabilities, to empower youth with mental health disabilities to take pride in who they are, to create a community of allies dedicated to ending myths around mental health disability and to celebrate the intersectionality of the lived experience and mental health disability.