Welcome

“Cast from the shackles which bound them, this bell shall ring out hope for...victory over mental illness."

The Mental Health Association of Central Alabama serves the citizens of Blount,  Jefferson, Shelby, St Clair and Walker counties.

We are one of the 340 affiliate chapters associated with the National Mental Health Association.

The National Mental Health Associated was founded in 1909 by a former psychiatric  patient, Clifford W. Beers.  During his stays in public and private institutions, Beers witnessed and was subjected to horrible abuse.  From these experiences, Beers set in to motion a movement of mental health reform.

The symbol of the Mental Health Association is the bell.  Nearly 50 years ago, the National Mental Health Association issued a call to asylums across the country for chains and shackles that restrained patients.  The National Mental Health Association then took these tools of mistreatment and forged them in to a powerful beacon of freedom: the 300-pound mental health bell.