About the Clearinghouse

The National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse is a peer-run national technical assistance and resource center that fosters recovery, self-determination, and community inclusion. The Clearinghouse serves individuals with lived experience of a mental health condition, peer-run service and advocacy organizations, family members, mental health professionals and service providers, policy makers, and the public.

The Clearinghouse was the first national technical assistance center founded and run by individuals diagnosed with mental health conditions. It was conceived in 1986 by founder Joseph Rogers in order to foster the movement for social justice of people with psychiatric diagnoses and to aid such individuals in their recovery. The Clearinghouse sparked the development of additional national technical assistance centers that serve people who have mental health conditions.

Until September 30, 2015, the Clearinghouse was funded through federal grants. Between then and June 29, 2018, the Clearinghouse was operated by volunteers under the auspices of Mental Health Partnerships. Since June 30, 2018, the Clearinghouse has been affiliated with the Temple University Collaborative on Community Inclusion. The Clearinghouse is grateful for the Temple University Collaborative's support of its websites and help in distributing the Clearinghouse monthly e-newsletter, the Key Update.

The Clearinghouse continues to connect people to self-help and advocacy resources and offer expertise to and about peer-run groups and organizations that serve individuals who have been diagnosed with mental health conditions.

The Clearinghouse publishes a monthly e-newsletter, the Key Update, which offers news and resources on a variety of mental health-related topics. For the latest edition, click here. In addition, the Clearinghouse has created a national (although not comprehensive) directory of Consumer-Driven Services: www.cdsdirectory.org. (Please note: The CDS Directory is currently unavailable. We hope that will change in the future.)