Hot Topics in Mental Health & Law: Assisted Outpatient Treatment series
January 21, 2027, 12:00–1:00 p.m. PT
Jerri Clark will share a family perspective on assisted outpatient treatment (AOT), including how AOT outcomes might improve with more input and engagement from care partners. Jerri Clark brings lived experience as mom to a son who died from his serious mental illness. She also brings professional insights from staffing the Treatment Advocacy Center’s national Helpline, which supports individuals and families attempting to navigate systems that intersect with serious mental illness including treatment, courts, incarceration, homelessness, and more.
This talk is included in an eight-session webinar series, Hot Topics in Mental Health and Law: Assisted Outpatient Treatment, for which continuing education is available. Participants must attend the live session to receive credit.
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to:
- Identify new opportunities to engage with and learn from family care partners of people with serious mental illness.
- Summarize benefits families recognize for loved ones who access AOT.
- Describe the challenges families in Washington and across the U.S. have described with AOT access, family engagement, and practice.
About the Speaker
Jerri Clark is senior advocacy and communications manager for the national nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC). She supports help seekers through the national TAC Helpline and consults with grassroots advocates seeking to use their lived experiences to impact systemic change. Jerri is a regular public speaker at conferences relevant to mental health systems change, and she has been featured by “PBS NewsHour;” World, Slate, and AwareNow magazines; The Seattle Times; and the “Tony Mantor: Why Not Me?” podcast. Clark dedicates her work to the memory of her son, Calvin, whose psychotic condition and suicide death are documented in her memoir of self-help and advocacy, Gone Before Gone: When Mental Illness Steals Someone You Love. Clark has a bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Kansas.
Continuing Education
This talk is included in an eight-session webinar series, Hot Topics in Mental Health and Law: Assisted Outpatient Treatment, for which continuing education credits are available. Participants must attend the live session to receive credit.