The Eighth Annual Report of The American Mental Health Foundation (AMHF), a 501(c)(3) organization, and a Better Business Bureau Accredited Charity ny.give.org


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This is the Eighth Annual Report of The American Mental Health Foundation (AMHF), a 501(c)(3) organization, and a Better Business Bureau Accredited Charity ny.give.org.

 

The American Mental Health Foundation (AMHF), is a research organization formed in 1924, incorporated in New York State in 1954. AMHF celebrates ten decades of philanthropic service and activities—“Advancing Mental Health: A Century of Excellence in Mental Health Research.”—likely an unprecedented long-term record of service to the public weal.

 

The fiscal year, which ends October 31, 2018, was one of extraordinary-positive change.

° AMHF is delighted to welcome new board-member Michelle Harrison, MD.

° For the first time in its history, AMHF is an Accredited Charity of the Better Business Bureau of New York. AMHF has an even more ambitious goal of directing 90 cents of every donated-dollar toward its 3 Strong Program Areas.

° AMHF Books is an outstanding program, publishers of Erich Fromm et al.

 

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Vision: Building a More Compassionate Society—Get Involved!

 

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Mission: AMHF endeavors to advance mental health throughout society via education, advocacy, and activism. The Mission Statement is found at this link.

Toward this end, a Facebook Page continues steady growth so that recent international outreach-and-news entries average evermore views, e.g., July 2018, 1,500. AMHF is on Twitter.

 

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History: The AMHF Wikipedia entry describes the key role of Hermann Broch, postwar chairman. A giant of 20th-century Austrian literature and social psychology, Broch was aided out of Vienna, following the Austrian Anschluss, by James Joyce, as one of his (Joyce’s) last acts. Broch and Otto Kauders recruited Dr. Stefan de Schill for director of research in 1948, a title de Schill retained for 60 years.

 

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2018 Leadership Changes: Michelle Harrison, MD, agreed to join the AMHF professional-advisory board on June 1, 2018, and was elected to the board of directors on June 26, 2018. She is the only individual to hold both positions. Dr. Harrison founded and runs Childlife Preserve Shishur Sevay in Calcutta. Her work can be linked from the AMHF Web site and here she is on twitter.

 

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AMHF works in 3 Strong Program Areas:

• research
• educational
• books in areas related to research

Research. A groundbreaking two-year control study under the direction of Dr. Suzanne Button formerly of Astor Services for Children & Families, of individuals with documented-behavioral issues, between the ages of 8 and 14, identifies factors and causes that could develop as later-life schizophrenia or in the form of other psychoses. Given the dearth of analysis in the area of predictive psychiatric behavior among youth, AMHF had established this as its principal research-and-programming goals into 2016: to support important and necessary studies, AMHF Books issues these findings as Early Identification, Palliative Care, and Prevention of Psychotic Disorders in Children and Youth. AMHF requires a substantial gift for other such studies.

No Person Will Be Untestable: Potential applications are enormous, e.g., to assess aging individuals with Down syndrome for signs of early onset Alzheimer’s disease, which is only one. As of October 2018, several candidates remain under consideration to spearhead the project launched by Dr. William Van Ornum of the professional-advisory board. AMHF requires a substantial gift or grant to move ahead and partner with Pearson Assessment, which indicated keen interest. In October 2017, Dr. Aurelio Prifitera is no longer with Pearson Assessment and a new contact, from the global division, is Cheryl McDougald.

 

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Publishing. Psychotherapeutic Traction: Uncovering the Patient’s Power-theme and Basic-wish, by Dr. Henry Kellerman, was issued May 2018. (A definitive pictorial biography of Erich Fromm, by his associate and literary-estate executor, Dr. Rainer Funk, scheduled for early 2019, is not likely to be issued pending resolution of foreign-rights sales.)

AMHF Books includes 25 titles since its launch in fall 2009. All titles, all formats, are available via Lantern/Amazon/Kindle. Several are available, since spring 2018 as audiobooks from Amazon. AMHF Books is strong in the following areas:

° Group therapy
° Personality formation
° PTSD, violence, bereavement, and life-stress
° Social psychology

A program ad for a spring 2019 issue of New York Review of Books is projected.

Into early 2018, AMHF Books continued exhibiting at academic meetings through a cost-neutral promotion with Library of Social Science.

 

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Seminars/Webinars. As a vital aspect of its mission, in 2012 at the FDR Presidential Library, AMHF inaugurated its one-day seminars, The Stefan de Schill Memorial Series.” This series was conceived as a two-day seminar Small Family Business, Big Family Stress.
Due to burgeoning costs in publicizing, the serminar series was superseded by two interactive Webinars—firsts for AMHF, which offers 2 CEU through APT, NASW, and NBCC. As of mid-2018, professionals and students continue to sign up for one of the Webinars, and for CEU.

In January 2017, AMHF was featured on Public Voice Salon, hosted by John Bredin, to discuss its history as well as social-psychologist Fromm and the tenuous, often-ignored state of psychotherapy today. An early 2019 appearance, on the social dimension of celebrity suicide, is in the works.

→ Additional funding is sought to defray the prohibitive costs of even successful, especially successful, Webinars and Seminars, since as part of its mission AMHF keeps the cost for taking its Webinars well below “market value.” All Seminars are free.

 

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Web site: The site is being evaluated for overhaul, to be more forward-looking, though presently costs are prohibitive. Modifications have recently been made to the Books dropdown, and each page features a link to the Better Business Bureau of New York Accreditation. The News items and Blogs feature cutting-edge essays and information on the advancement of mental health in more than 50 Categories.

Of news to most of the medical community is an August 14, 2018, posting on SUDEP (Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy). Current scientific thinking is that more individuals die of SUDEP, an inexplicable dysfunction of the brain, than from SIDS (so-called crib death). AMHF will carry its findings further in 2019.

 

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Professional Advisory Board. AMHF has an enviable professional-advisory board. In spring 2018 Michelle Harrison, MD, agreed to be the 15th adviser. Her earlier background in psychopharmacology and current work with orphaned and profoundly disabled children, especially girls, in India, are a boon to AMHF.

 

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Income and Fundraising. There is a single modest endowment, the Baschkopf Family Fund. The generosity of Rosaria N. Tomasetta, half of whose estate was donated to AMHF in August 2012, had been an important source of funding into 2016. In 2017, AMHF received a sizable portion of the estate of the late Gwendolyn Curry. All 2016-18 donors are listed on the AMHF Web site and are encouraged to partner more fully.

A fundraising-test letter, in fall 2016, yielded encouraging results.

All gifts, of any size, to The American Mental Health Foundation are fully tax deductible.

The latest AMHF audit and NYS Charities Bureau filings are posted on the Web site and also may be viewed by clicking here.

The most-recent CPA report is likewise posted on the Web site and similarly may be viewed by clicking here.

In 2017 AMHF reached a critical stage in funding its mission, and its directors seek a more-aggressive, forward-leaning strategy through the fiscal year ending October 31, 2019.

 

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→ Long-range Future: Building Donors (“Friendraising”), Grant Applications: Did you know that (U.S.) society is on the verge of the largest-generational transfer of wealth in history? The American Mental Health Foundation fits in these plans.

The AMHF mission and accomplishments are outstanding for a nonprofit of its scale.

Know that when you give you are supporting one of the first philanthropic organizations of its kind. AMHF, is committed to expansion and extension of its mission, outreach, and research in a way that will benefit individuals and society by, among other undertakings, focusing on the specific emotional needs and issues confronted by the disabled and elders, growing populations that are underserved.

Neither is AMHF a so-called pass-through not-for-profit or a kind of mere “magpie” organization, of which, let’s face it, the world is too-filled. AMHF always focuses on you: its own work in your behalf; on the critical emotional issues facing individuals to build a better society today!

→ Following are 9 key areas or research programs alongside the following fund-raising goals:

Schizophrenia $350,000
AMHF-Pearson Assessment (Developmentally Delayed) $600,000 ($50K donated 2016-17)
PTSD $150,000
Suicide Prevention $250,000
Depression $350,000
OCD $150,000
Alcoholism $150,000
Animal-companion Bereavement $150,000
SUDEP (Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy) $150,000

 

Give generously to The American Mental Health Foundation. The directors of AMHF thank you for reading this Annual Report and welcome comments and improvements of service—via the Web site under Contact, which includes the AMHF telephone number (unchanged since the 1940s).


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