Juli Lawrence – Rakish Gardening

This page last updated July 28th, 2007

Since you Googled.

Juli Lawrence is a mental health activist and freelance writer in the United States.

Juli Lawrence was born in rural Southern Illinois and spent her childhood there. After high school, she began university at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and graduated from SIU-C, never failing to make Dean’s List.  She was Day News Editor at the Daily Egyptian, the university newspaper and got a BS in journalism and BA in Russian Language and Literature. She was also the editor of the Southern Journalist, a publication about journalism in Southern Illinois.

Juli Lawrence then did her Masters in cultural anthropology: her area was the former Soviet Union with a concentration on the (former) Soviet Central Asian Republics, and the conflicting influences of communism and Islam on the position of women.

She also studied at Leningrad State University (LGU), living in Leningrad, and spent time living in the former Yugoslavia.

While at SIU-C, Juli Lawrence was an officer in the campus chapter of Society of Professional Journalists, president of the Russian club, and a member and Secretary General of the Mock United Nations, where she represented the USSR and delivered her speeches in Russian with the aid of an English interpreter. (Juli is not Russian, but has a lifelong passion for the area and cultures.) She also worked as a volunteer at an area senior center that served elderly Soviet Jewish immigrants.

During this time, she worked on the presidential election campaign of Gary Hart and wrote for some of his political publications. She later worked with Sen. Paul Simon (D-Makanda) to battle budget cuts in the Department of Foreign Languages and keep the Russian Department open.

She also served as translator for the state of Illinois, and was occasionally sent to Chester, Illinois to translate for a non-English-speaking patient sometimes housed at the mental health facility there.

She taught beginning Russian grammar at SIU-C for two years, then worked as managing editor of a statewide labor newspaper in Illinois. She covered state politics and labor issues.

When the paper closed down due to the death of the owner, she accepted a position with Shawnee Adolescent Health Center in Carbondale, though continued to write on a freelance basis. Her articles have appeared in publications/wires including the St. Louis Globe Democrat, UPI, Woman’s Day Magazine and many others.

At the center, she worked as the Communications Director and ran prevention programs for teens, including a program to foster communication between parents and teens, and a theater troupe called Faces, which was made up of at-risk children.

The Adolescent Health Center provides health and social services to teenagers, health care for the children of teenage mothers, prevention programs and educational programs. It is primarily state funded through grants. AHC is part of the wider Shawnee Health Services, a non-profit conglomeration of agencies that provides health care and social services to the elderly, migrant population, children and teens, black lung patients and other underserved groups.

After receiving electroshock therapy in 1994 for depression, Juli Lawrence began ect.org, a website that provides information about ECT and a community forum for ECT consumers and survivors.

She served a three-year term on an advisory committee at CMHS/SAMHSA, concerning mental health issues . She was part of the consumer/survivor committee that advised the federal government on its ECT report.

She has presented numerous papers and lectures at federal, state and local conferences and meetings, including the National Conference on Mental Health Statistics (SAMHSA) and the annual NIMH conference.

She also served on the board of directors of the St. Louis Depressive and Manic Depressive Association and is currently the Vice President of the Board of Directors of CTIP, the only international organization of ECT survivors.

To be continued…