About NAMI Colorado Springs
NAMI Colorado Springs is an affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the United States' largest grassroots organization dedicated to improving the lives of people with mental illness. As such, we enjoy access to nationally developed and vetted programs and educational materials while operating as a fully independent and locally run 501c3 nonprofit organization.
Our programs and support groups are peer-led and always free to the community. They emphasize that mental illness is biologically based, treatable and common — with 1 in 5 of us experiencing it in any given year. And they break down, roughly, into three categories.
For people living with mental illness: Peer-to-Peer and Connection Support Groups provide strategies and support to adults who wish to establish and maintain wellness in response to personal mental health challenges such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression and more.
For family members: Family-to-Family, Basics and Family Support Groups serve family members of
individuals who struggle with mental illness, providing information and resources on brain physiology, advocacy strategies, self-care and more.
For community members and groups: NAMI Colorado Springs offers classes and presentations to audiences as diverse as faith leaders, high school students and law enforcement officers. Each is designed to fight stigma and to educate others on the “lived experience” of mental illness.
Today, NAMI Colorado Springs offers more than a dozen formal programs — up from just three in 2011, the year before Lori Jarvis-Steinwert was hired as the organization’s first-ever executive director. Since that transition, the organization has also led or co-led five community-wide awareness initiatives and built a corps of more than 100 trained volunteers who teach classes, connect with the community at resource fairs, and help thousands of people each year navigate the complicated mental health system.
To better serve populations with higher barriers to care, in recent years we have started dedicated outreach to local teens and communities of color. We want to be a known resource for most anyone navigating mental illness — and we are getting there. As El Paso County epidemiologist Helen Harris puts it: “NAMI would be where I would direct someone who needed access navigating mental health services. I know of no other organization who provides that.”
Our programs and support groups are peer-led and always free to the community. They emphasize that mental illness is biologically based, treatable and common — with 1 in 5 of us experiencing it in any given year. And they break down, roughly, into three categories.
For people living with mental illness: Peer-to-Peer and Connection Support Groups provide strategies and support to adults who wish to establish and maintain wellness in response to personal mental health challenges such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression and more.
For family members: Family-to-Family, Basics and Family Support Groups serve family members of
individuals who struggle with mental illness, providing information and resources on brain physiology, advocacy strategies, self-care and more.
For community members and groups: NAMI Colorado Springs offers classes and presentations to audiences as diverse as faith leaders, high school students and law enforcement officers. Each is designed to fight stigma and to educate others on the “lived experience” of mental illness.
Today, NAMI Colorado Springs offers more than a dozen formal programs — up from just three in 2011, the year before Lori Jarvis-Steinwert was hired as the organization’s first-ever executive director. Since that transition, the organization has also led or co-led five community-wide awareness initiatives and built a corps of more than 100 trained volunteers who teach classes, connect with the community at resource fairs, and help thousands of people each year navigate the complicated mental health system.
To better serve populations with higher barriers to care, in recent years we have started dedicated outreach to local teens and communities of color. We want to be a known resource for most anyone navigating mental illness — and we are getting there. As El Paso County epidemiologist Helen Harris puts it: “NAMI would be where I would direct someone who needed access navigating mental health services. I know of no other organization who provides that.”