The Donald Keyes Mental Health Benefit

Saturday, February 2 @ The Georgian Hotel

originally published January 30, 2008

The Mental Health Association of Northeast Georgia’s annual benefit, now in its 18th year, concludes this weekend with the perennial mainstay of the event, an art auction to raise funds for the organization. The auction will be without its traditional auctioneer, Donald Keyes, who passed away in May of 2007, but his connection to the event continues. Now dubbed the Donald Keyes Mental Health Benefit, the week of awareness-raising has been renamed in honor of Keyes’ stalwart support for the cause.

“I am afraid that the stigma of mental illness remains strong in our culture,” notes Eddie Whitlock, the association’s executive director. Whitlock points to the media’s exploitation of celebrities’ mental health troubles and “a culture that views celebrity mental illness as entertainment” as evidence of the substantial work that remains to be done to “fight the stigma” (to borrow the organization’s slogan).

Proceeds raised during the art auction will help fund the organization’s educational and advocacy efforts. Chief among these is the group’s current project to get the “Breaking the Silence” curriculum developed by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill into local school systems.

“This curriculum teaches children to care for their mental health just as they care for their physical health,” explains Whitlock. The group is also working to encourage local funding for a state mental health ombudsman and to support “psychiatric advance directives” that “would give people facing possible mental health crises a chance to make written statements regarding their care should they become incapable of making those decisions in the future.”

Whitlock describes this year’s auction as a diverse selection of 100 pieces from local artists: “The works include a wide range of media, including paintings, limited-edition prints, sketches, pottery and jewelry.” Artwork is on display at Cups Coffee on Barnett Shoals Road through Feb. 1, and photographs of this year’s auction items can also be viewed online at www.fightthestigma.com. (They’re not all so artsy, either: a 1992 BMW motorcycle that belonged to Keyes is on the auction block, too.)

The auction takes place at the Georgian Hotel, downtown at 247 E. Washington St., on Feb. 2 beginning at 7 p.m.

Two free film screenings at the Georgia Museum of Art are also a part of this year’s benefit. The Golden Globe-winning Away From Her, which chronicles a couple’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease, screens Tuesday, Jan. 29 at 7 p.m., with discussion to follow. Rocket Science, a film from Spellbound director Jeffrey Blitz that follows a stuttering debate-team member, screens at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 31.

Jennifer Bryant