COMING OUT PROUD to Erase the Stigma of Mental Illness: Stories and Essays of Solidarity
Edited by Patrick W. Corrigan Jonathan E. Larson
Coming Out Proud is a peer-led program meant to replace the stigma of mental illness with
beliefs of recovery, empowerment, and hope. It does so by: helping participants consider costs
and benefits of disclosing their personal narrative, learning strategies for disclosing relatively
safely, and crafting a message that best represents personal goals.
Stories and Essays of Solidarity will be a collection of personal reflections by people with lived experience on coming
out, pride, and solidarity using lessons learned from their journey. We plan to provide copies of
the bound book to people who complete the Coming Out Proud program. We will also sell
copies to support roll out of COP programs nationwide.
We seek authors to submit reflections for this book. Authors might be people with lived
experience or advocates promoting affirming attitudes to erase stigma. Family members and
friends of people with mental illness are also welcome to submit pieces but we ask them to write
in the first person about themselves. Pieces should be 5 to 25 pages and might be scholarly
considerations of key ideas or personal reflections. We encourage authors to brighten their essay
or story with real world experience from their lives. Visual art work, poetry, and fiction may
accompany submissions. If interested, please submit a short paragraph outlining your intended
story or essay along with your name and contact information to Pat Corrigan (corrigan@iit.edu)
or Jon Larson (larsonjon@iit.edu) by August 1, 2014. We plan to be inclusive, hope to include
many pieces, and will respond to submissions by September 1. We wish for all submissions to be
proofread and well written.