The "Healing Starts With Us" (HSWU) campaign is a mental health awareness effort designed to educate the public -- in particular, people of color -- about deprestion and its impact on the community. HSWU is an outgrowth of the overwhelming response to a book written by Terrie M. Williams entitled, "Black Pain: It Just Looks Like We're Not Hurting."

The campaign's goal is to reduce the frightening number of individuals who are undiagnosed and suffering from depression, and to serve as a community supported network for awareness, dialogue, education and inspiration. Specific goals include:

• To generate additional support from psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals by donating a number of hours to the HSWU Wellness Program. We already have over 300 hours donated.

• To increase the number of individuals who seek treatment for depression from 16% to 25% over the next three years.

• To have one million people -- particularly people of color -- take an on-line or in-person Mental Wellness Assessment test over the next three years.
  
  
• To host an on-line lifestyle community that serves as the destination of choice for individuals seeking information about depression.
  
  
• To sustain the number of young minorities interested in entering the mental health care profession.
  
  

As a mental health practitioner and an individual who manages depression, Terrie shares, first-hand, that the affects of depression are REAL. Depression not only destabilizes the life of the individual experiencing it, but also the lives of those they care about. If left unnamed and untreated, it robs you of your quality of life and destroys communities in its wake.

The HSWU campaign's primary mission is to get people to start talking and educate them on what depression looks, sounds and feels like and, most importantly, encourage them not to remain silent but seek professional help, if needed.