TREATMENT ADVOCACY CENTER APPOINTS FOUR TO BOARD OF DIRECTORS
EXPERTISE IN LAW ENFORCEMENT, COMMUNITY PSYCHIATRY, BUSINESS, AND ADVOCACY

ARLINGTON, VA - Treatment Advocacy Center President E. Fuller Torrey announced the appointment of four new members to the Treatment Advocacy Center board of directors. The Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to removing barriers to treatment of severe mental illnesses. TAC educates legislators and the media on the benefits of assisted treatment in an effort to decrease homelessness, jailings, suicide, violence and other devastating consequences caused by lack of treatment.

TAC's newest board members bring extensive experience in law enforcement, mental health advocacy, community psychiatry, and business development, as well as personal and family experience with mental illnesses:

• Donald F. Eslinger, Sheriff of Seminole County, Florida. Sheriff Eslinger has been in law enforcement for more than 27 years. He is a past member of the Board of Directors fo the National Sheriffs' Association and is past president and Legislative Chairman of the Florida Sheriffs Association. Under the three-year leadership of Sheriff Eslinger, Florida Partners in Crisis (a statewide mental health and advocacy coalition) was successful in broadening its base of advocacy to include nontraditional stakeholders from the criminal justice system, heightening the awareness and understanding of mental health and substance abuse issues by legislators and their constituents. In 1998, he formed a Mental Health Task Force in his county that has implemented significant diversion programs, including a successful Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) that his office operates. He spearheaded the effort to reform Florida’s Baker Act to include assisted outpatient treatment.
• Valerie Fox, advocate and writer, New Jersey. Ms. Fox has lived with schizophrenia for 40 years, including two years when she was homeless on the streets. She founded a 501.c.3 corporation with the purpose of advocating through education mental health issues. This corporation was founded in 1991 and continues to grow today. Ms. Fox has also authored many articles about mental illness, including an article named “Scissors,” which involves homelessness, desperation, and schizophrenia.
• Jeffrey Geller, M.D., director of public sector psychiatry and professor of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Geller has fought for the right for meaningful care for those who do not recognize their illness, both as a clinician and as an academic, for more than 25 years. He is the book review editor for Psychiatric Services, and the author of numerous research papers and studies and the book Women of the Asylum. Dr. Geller won the 1994 Effective Legislative Fellow Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and was honored by the American Psychiatric Association as a Distinguished Fellow in 2002 and the Arnold L. van Ameringen Award winner in 2003. Dr. Geller's "patients first" approach is well known. One colleague remembers Dr. Geller being asked to come on NPR to speak about advocating for people with serious mental illnesses – but the taping date was also his patient clinic day. He declined the national exposure, saying, "How can I go on a radio show to speak of advocacy after canceling all my patients?"
• Stephen Segal, president of Family Partners, Inc., Pennsylvania. Mr. Segal is a business executive with a background in mental health issues. Since 1985, he has been president of Family Partners, Inc., a manufacturer of magnetic products for both re-sale and promotional purposes. In the early 1980s, he was president of Resources for Parents at Work, a consulting company for large corporations in America interested in helping employees raise their children well while working. Prior to that he worked as coordinator for the Council on Alcoholism in the Cincinnati Area, a nonprofit voluntary health agency. His educational background includes a masters degree in Health Science from the Department of Mental Hygiene of the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health and a masters degree in Education from Temple University, with a focus on early child development. His undergraduate degree is from Washington University, where he majored in psychology.

"We are pleased to welcome people of such caliber to be stewards for this unique advocacy organization,” said Torrey. “Each has shone not only in his or her chosen field, but also as an advocate for people with severe mental illnesses too ill to fight for themselves. Their collective wisdom, expertise, and passion are an important addition to our board of directors, and will strengthen our ability both to defeat laws and policies that are barriers to treatment and to campaign for practices that ensure timely and sustained treatment.”

The new board members join board president Torrey and seven other board members: Frederick J. Frese, PhD; Gerald R. Tarutis, Esq.; Judge James Cayce; Ray Coleman; Carla Jacobs; D.J. Jaffe; and Kenneth Kress, J.D., Ph.D.

Full biographies of all Treatment Advocacy Center board members are available online at http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/PressRoom/presskits/AboutTACPressKit/boardofdirectors.htm.

The Treatment Advocacy Center (www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating barriers to the timely and effective treatment of severe mental illnesses. TAC promotes laws, policies, and practices for the delivery of psychiatric care and supports the development of innovative treatments for and research into the causes of severe and persistent psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

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