The past few weeks we've continued to update information around the site.
We're also working to get a number of videos related to schizophrenia converted into web format for people to be able to freely access from the site. This should be great as an additional way to learn about schizophrenia. This is a slower process - likely to take a few more months.
New blogs are being added to the site every week - I think we're up to almost 20 people now who are doing their own blogs - and it continues to increase at a rate of a couple of people each week. This is really exciting because we're getting a lot of different viewpoints on schizophrenia that should help a lot of people better understand the disease from a number of perspectives. If you haven't yet started a blog - please join in!
Of course we're always trying to keep up with the constant flow of email that we get - to help people with many unique questions.
Backend software (discussion areas, blog software, etc.) also needs constant attention - and upgrades to new version. We're planning a major upgrade in the discussion area software in the next few months - and have started to plan for that.
This week we're working on making higher priority information more available on the home page - so we've updated the home page to highlight the "Prevent Schizoprenia" information. Our goal with this information is to help all the families that have already suffered with at least one person who has schizophrenia - to not have to suffer with this disease in future generations.
Had a conversation with some researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health this morning. While they do great things - I get unbelievably frustrated at how slow they move. The sense of urgency is near Zero it seems with many of the NIMH folks (Not all I'm sure).
People are suffering from schizophrenia all around us, being jailed constantly - and they seem like there is no urgency at all. I've almost always worked in companies where there is intense enthusiasm for the company's goals and objectives (usually smaller companies) - and people work hard to move things forward very quickly. Whenever I interact with government agencies I always feel like I've suddenly been put into slow motion. Its extremely sad in the case of schizophrenia - because this is such an important area (the research, and the delivery of services) and the people that end up paying (literally and figuratively) are the people who have the disease, and their families.
I love what the NIMH does and stands for - but I wish they'd stop acting like my Grandmother, and get off their butts and treat schizophrenia like the urgent, deadly, devastating disease that it is.