Personally Speaking: Leading For Our Loved Ones
By John Snook
Every day, the Treatment Advocacy Center gets calls from families across the nation seeking help for a loved one in a mental health 
crisis. Hundreds of people reach out to us every year, desperate for assistance in navigating our nation’s broken mental health system.
Their stories are often variations on a theme: families watching a loved one unnecessarily fall apart.
“I’m worried that my brother or daughter or husband is really sick,” a caller says. “But the system says nothing can be done because they’re not yet violent. It’s obvious to everyone they’re sick; why isn’t anyone doing anything?”
These calls are difficult, scary and time consuming.
But I know how important these calls are, because I was once a Treatment Advocacy Center, “help call.” And that help call changed the course of my life.
As I began finals in my first year of law school, a loved one of mine suffered a psychotic break. They left their job in finance unexpectedly, following secret symbols on billboards, eventually ending up 1,200 miles away in Miami.
I was at a loss. I didn’t know anyone in Miami. I had never been to the city in my life.
Even if I did, I certainly didn’t have the resources to fly there and search the streets, especially in the middle of some of the most important tests of my life!
Out of options, I approached my law school dean, Daniel Polsby, for advice. Dean Polsby was similarly at a loss, but he had an idea. A mental health organization had begun teaching a class at the law school: mental illness and the law. Perhaps they might have some ideas?
That organization was the Treatment Advocacy Center. I met the TAC team and we formulated a plan. Eventually, they put me in contact with the Florida Sheriffs Association and local mental health officials. Together, we found my loved one, navigated the byzantine Florida mental health system and eventually got help.
I was lucky. With the Treatment Advocacy Center’s assistance, our crisis had a positive ending. I was able to finish my law school finals and move ahead with my education.
But my focus had shifted.
For the first time, I realized that, not only were there others that recognized how broken our mental health system was, but there were people actually doing something about it.
I had to be a part of it.
And, I began interning for the Treatment Advocacy Center, eventually taking a position as legislative and policy counsel after I passed the bar.
In that role, I saw firsthand how outdated laws and policies were hurting the most severely ill and people who loved them. I saw how our treatment system failed to provide enough treatment beds and community resources, forcing law enforcement and our jails to pick up the slack.
Eventually, I left the Treatment Advocacy Center to start the state advocacy shop for Habitat for Humanity International. There I had the opportunity to help shape the nation’s response to the foreclosure crisis and to build on the advocacy skills I learned at TAC in both the federal and state legislatures.
But my heart was always in mental health. And so, I jumped at the opportunity to return to the Treatment Advocacy Center as executive director. Now I have the privilege to guide this organization during one of the most important times for mental health in the history of our nation.
Our work has necessarily expanded, but I have never forgotten how I first encountered the organization and what their assistance meant for my family and me.
The Treatment Advocacy Center is many things, but first and foremost, it is an assemblage of people who care about helping those with the most severe mental illness. Whether we are busy changing laws, providing technical assistance to a burgeoning assisted outpatient treatment program or explaining the treatment system to a reporter, that passion fuels all of our work.
I know the impact TAC can have during the most difficult moments in a person’s life and that is why I am so proud to lead this organization during this urgent time.
John Snook is the executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center.
