Special Recognition Award for Lichtenstein from Mass. Association for Mental Health

Bill Lichtenstein honored for "leadership in promoting public awareness" . . .  and "courage and generosity" in sharing family's experience" to light the path" for others. 

Top: Bill Lichtenstein receives Special Recognition Award from the Mass. Association for Mental Health. 
Middle and Bottom: Congressman Joseph Kennedy III receives award from MAMH. 
June 19, 2017 (Boston): The Massachusetts Association for Mental Health awarded a Special Recognition award to Bill Lichtenstein, Peabody Award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker and president of Lichtenstein Creative Media.  The award was presented at a gala dinner ceremony at the Seaport Hotel in Boston.  

Also honored at the dinner for his mental health advocacy was Congressman Joseph Kennedy III.  

Bill was honored for his work in television, radio, film and print dealing with mental health and child welfare.  This includes:
  • The highly-acclaimed "Voices of an Illness" series for public radio in the 1990's, the first programs to feature people who had recovered from serious mental illness, telling their own stories in their own words; 
  • The documentary film "West 47th Street," which followed three years in the lives of four people with serious mental illness who were members of the Fountain House rehabilitation program in New York City.  The film won Best Documentary at the Atlanta Film Festival, aired on the PBS documentary series P.O.V., and was called "Must See" by Newsweek; and 
  • Articles for the New York Times and Huffington Post exposing the use of physical restraints and seclusion rooms with children as young as five years old in schools, which led to a national effort to ban the use of these practices.   

Bill Lichtenstein's award from MAMH read: ​
"In recognition of your leadership in promoting public awareness through media and film, encouraging personal hopes, and supporting individual recovery from behavioral health and disability conditions, 

For your work to educate the nation and inform public policy, combatting stigma and discrimination, 

With thanks for your courage and generosity in sharing your own family's experience to light the path to reform and recovery for others across the Commonwealth."