Joseph Rogers, Chief Advocacy Officer

Joseph Rogers is Chief Advocacy Officer of the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania (MHASP), and founder and Executive Director of the National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse, a consumer-run national technical assistance center funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services.

In 1984, Joseph Rogers created Project SHARE (Self-Help and Advocacy Resource Exchange), a peer-support and advocacy organization, under MHASP’s auspices. As a result of Rogers’ vision and leadership, Project SHARE grew until it was blended with MHASP, which Rogers had built from a small regional mental health advocacy agency into one of the largest mental health associations in the country, including an array of peer-run programs serving local, statewide, and national constituencies. From 1997 to 2007, Rogers served as President and CEO of MHASP.

A national leader of the mental health consumer movement, Joseph Rogers has testified before U.S. Senate committees and has consulted in more than 30 states, as well as nationally and internationally, on behavioral health policy issues. He has chaired and/or served on numerous boards and committees, such as the Executive Committee of the President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, and the Congressionally appointed Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of People with Disabilities, which helped pass the Americans with Disabilities Act. He was a key player in the closing of Philadelphia State Hospital and in the successful struggle to get the dollars to follow the patients into the community, to establish what has become a model system of community-based services, including peer-run services.

Rogers has appeared on numerous radio and TV shows to publicize the self-help/advocacy movement and fight prejudice and discrimination.

His many awards include the Heinz Award for the Human Condition (2005), the Outstanding Non-Psychiatrist Award of the American Association of Community Psychiatrists (2002), and the Timothy Coakley Behavioral Health Leadership Award of the American College of Mental Health Administration (2009), for his leadership in transforming mental health care in this country.