Leadership Team_Ben Harrington

Ben Harrington

Executive Director, Mental Health Association of East Tennessee

Bio: Ben has been with the MHA since 1994 as executive director. Under his leadership, the MHA has built extensive outreach programs serving middle and high schools in Tennessee (Mental Health 101) and in the business community (Mental Health Matters in the Workplace),which focus on improved symptom knowledge as the first step in getting people to recognize they or a peer needs mental health or addiction treatment.

He has served the mental health community through longstanding appointments (14+ years) to the Tennessee Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Planning & Policy Council and the regional planning council, also serving as Chairman at one time or another of both councils. Governors Sundquist and Bredesen appointed him to the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network Advisory Board, a group he also chaired. The Greater Knoxville Business Journal recognized Ben Harrington with its 2010 Healthcare Hero Award for Community Service.

Why are you involved in Together! Healthy Knox? “Together! Healthy Knox is important to me because to be healthy requires us to be mentally healthy as well as physically healthy.Mental illness starts early, yet people average 10-12 years of delay from start of symptoms to start of treatment, causing undue suffering and treatment-resistant illness. Additionally, people with mental illness live 25 years less than those without mental illness, not because of their mental illness, but rather because of their co-occurring medical conditions which often go untreated. Untreated mental illness costs businesses greatly though decreased productivity and unnecessary health costs.”

*Together! Healthy Knox uses Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP), a model developed by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), for a planned approach to improve health and quality of life.

last updated on November 3, 2010