Vail Place - (952) 938-9622

Community-based mental health recovery and healthy independent living http://www.vailplace.org

Who We Serve . . .
People with long-term, serious illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression

Where We Are . . .
• Minneapolis Uptown (36th & Hennepin)
• Hopkins Downtown (9th Avenue off Main St.)

What We Accomplished in 2010 . . .
• Served 1,771 people
• 98% of individuals who sought housing obtained it
• $1,109,272 – total earnings for all member working
• 92% of members receiving case management avoided psychiatric hospitalization

How We Serve the Broader Community . . .
By saving lives and dollars:
• We help people help themselves and contribute to the community, reducing costly interventions: hospitalization, homelessness, incarceration, police and other public resources
• We help each person for about $5.60/day – a psychiatric hospitalization runs about $2,600/day/person
• We also help restore broken relationships and build healthy ones . . . within families, with friends, and with the broader community

How We Came to Be . . .
Vail Place is part of the Clubhouse Movement, which began as a result of the vision and persistence of a small group of individuals with serious mental illness, released from a psychiatric institution in New York in the 1940’s. They realized there was no community support available for them and for those like them because there was virtually no understanding in the community of their personal worth and of their potential for recovery . . . so they started their own support group called WANA – We Are Not Alone.

WANA soon attracted the attention of progressive community leaders and mental health professionals and grew into the Clubhouse Movement, a model of mental health rehabilitation based on helping people manage and control their own lives through a process that builds community around them, a series of links: to relationships; to safe and stable homes; to jobs; to engaged and productive community life. Clubhouse is now practiced in over 300 locations all over the world and has proved its effectiveness in every culture.

Vail Place – adopting the name of Minnesota’s nationally recognized mental health pioneer Dr. David Vail – opened its doors in Hopkins in 1981, adding the Uptown Minneapolis location in 1988. It is the only recognized Clubhouse in Minnesota.

Tags: Counseling & Mental Health,Community Organization,Clubhouse