Serious mental illness is a leading cause of disability worldwide, yet only a small fraction of people who need treatment have access to care in their communities. Many more are subject to neglect and abuse of their human and civil rights.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has joined forces with Ashoka's Changemakers to launch Rethinking Mental Health: Improving Community Wellbeing, a competition for new ideas and practices that challenge the status quo in terms of how we think about and address mental health care needs.

As someone who cares deeply about mental health issues, we invite you to visit the competition Web site to take a look at some of the ideas that have been submitted to date. We also encourage you to join this important conversation on how individuals, families and communities can move past narrow perceptions of mental health and expand their involvement in finding solutions. You can join the effort by:

• Visiting the Web site and commenting on entries from others like you who are deeply concerned about this very important issue and want to get involved.
• Entering the competition and sharing your ideas for improving mental health with the world.
• Helping to spread the word about the competition to others you know who care about these issues.

Please note that you will have to create an account on the Changemakers Web site to post, but it is free to do so and will only take a minute of your time.

Entries and comments can be submitted through October 14, 2009. A panel of judges will then nominate the top 10 ideas that the Changemakers community will vote on. The Changemakers collaborative competition winners—the three finalists that receive the most votes—will be announced on December 16, 2009, and will each receive a cash prize of $5,000.

As important as the three winners are, it is even more significant that a dialogue occurs about mental health that and that as many great minds as possible come to the table with fresh thinking and new solutions.