Mental Health Conference

On September 5 and 6, 2002, Protection and Advocacy presented a conference for consumers, entitled, "From Patienthood to Personhood." It was held at the Acoma Sky City Hotel. The reason we chose this location is because the casino works closely with the Acoma Rehabilitation Program to provide a wide array of employment opportunities to persons with disabilities.

Our keynote speaker was Amy Long, who is a consumer, a psychiatric nurse and a trainer on empowerment. Our plenary speaker was Laura Prescott, who is a consumer, and president and founder of Sister Witness International Incorporated, an organization of institutionalized women and girls which focuses on developing network opportunities and providing technical assistance to this population.

We would like to thank everyone who presented at the conference, including Donald Hume, Gilberto Romero, Sarah Sommers, Dr. William Hunter, Mary Modrow, Florence Barnes, James Lee, Susan Browne and Pam Hyde. They were intelligent, well spoken, and sensational!

P&A is also proud to have been a venue for the exhibition of work from local artists.

Last but not least, we want to say thank you to all the consumers who traveled from different parts of our fair state to attend this conference. P&A hopes that you had as good a time and as profitable an experience as we did.