Surgeon General Launches Mental Health Campaign for African-American Community at Howard University

It was a crime so heinous, so hideous, that it defied many, if not most people's imagination.

A disturbed Washington, D.C., mother had apparently killed her four African-American daughters, ages 5 to 17, and left their bodies rotting in their home for seven months while she went about her daily routine. The bodies were discovered during an eviction in January 2009.

Later, the mother, Banita Jacks, 35, told homicide detectives that she believed demons possessed her daughters, and she was confident that they would return from the dead when the demons died.

Prior to the murders, Jacks had never been recognized with or treated for mental illness.

It is such cases and every day issues related to mental illness that bring U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin to Howard University Tuesday to kick off a national campaign to tackle mental health in the African-American community.

Benjamin and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) will bring the subject into focus at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 23, in the second floor conference room of the Howard University Cancer Center and the Towers Auditorium at Howard University Hospital during a nationally broadcast telecast.

Benjamin and SAMHSA, working with the Ad Council and the Stay Strong Foundation, will unveil three new television public service announcements to coincide with the first HBCU National Mental Health Awareness Day and discuss the issue plaguing African Americans.

The launch will be telecast simultaneously to colleges and universities nationwide and will include an hour-long panel presentation by the Howard University Department of Psychiatry.

Participants will be able to ask questions in person, via television from their universities and through the Internet.