Why is NAMI Tied in with Eli Lilly?
I was poking around this afternoon and ran into this. It’s an Eli Lilly website, a neuroscience resource center called Tools for the Fight. Wow, I so love that tone: Eli Lilly is talking like an advocacy group. If you go through the site, you will see NAMI’s name all over it, and the group’s exectuive director is listed a being on the advisory board. WTF? NAMI national–as opposed to local affiliates–has long been accused of being in bed with pharma companies and getting a large percentage of its funding from them. This is true. Lately, NAMI has claimed that it isn’t as dependent on pharma funding as it once was. I’ve never seen them make public their funding in such a way that anyone could tell either way. Whatever. But this kind of conflict of interest where Eli Lilly is essentially branding NAMI as the go-to group on mental illness is unacceptable. Also, NAMI’s ED being as closely linked to the “campaign” as she is is totally unacceptable. If NAMI national wants patients, for whom
