1A in Action: 12 Mental Health Activists Who Used the Power of the First Amendment

Throughout U.S. history, activists have used their First Amendment freedoms to support the causes they care about.

This includes mental health activists, who have raised awareness around mental health challenges and advocated for policy changes in care — efforts enabled by the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and petition.

Editor's note: This article is part of 1A in Action, an ongoing series that tells the stories of the people, groups and movements that bring the five First Amendment freedoms to life every day.

12 mental health activists who have made mental health awareness and support their mission

These activists have used their First Amendment freedoms to speak out and advocate for mental health awareness and care.

Editor's note: These activists are arranged alphabetically by last name.

Juan Acosta

Since he was a teenager, Juan Acosta has used First Amendment freedoms to advocate for mental health care, particularly for the LGBTQ+ community.

He co-hosted a cable access show about youth leadership, using his freedoms of speech and press to engage others. He successfully petitioned for his town of Woodland, California, to issue a historic LGBTQ+ proclamation, noting: “I had a lot of mental health challenges growing up as a gay male because there was no message of encouragement or acknowledgement from the community.”

He also worked with several mental health organizations in 2020, including the California BlueSky initiative, to support mental health care in schools. And at age 21, he contributed to a Lady Gaga book, “Channel Kindness,” exercising his speech and press freedoms to speak out about an issue of public concern.

Jan Barry

Activism by Vietnam War veteran Jan Barry and Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a group he co-founded in 1967, contributed to the defining of post-traumatic stress disorder as a psychological diagnosis in 1980.

Barry exercised his First Amendment rights after seeing firsthand the impacts of the Vietnam War. He used his press freedom to write a letter to the editor of The New York Times providing an Army veteran’s perspective. He and five other veterans used their freedom of assembly to form a veterans’ group where veterans could come together to share their experiences and provide each other with support. He invited a psychiatrist to attend, which led to studies on stress reactions in veterans and changes to official diagnostic criteria.

Barry also helped launch 1st Casualty Press in 1971, using his freedoms of speech and press to publish poetry and essays by himself and other veterans and guides to grassroots organizing. He later became an investigative journalist.

Simone Biles

She may be best known for her gymnastics dominance, but Simone Biles has also exercised her First Amendment freedoms to speak out and advocate for mental health awareness and support — for athletes and for everyone.

In 2018, she shared her experiences of abuse by a coach, exercising her right to petition by testifying before the U.S. Senate. When Biles pulled out of several events at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after experiencing the “twisties,” a body-mind disconnect that sometimes afflicts gymnasts, a national discussion about athletes’ mental health ignited. She said she hadn’t set out to become an advocate but wants people to understand the importance of having a support system.

She used her free speech rights in her post-Olympic tour to spread the message of “hope, strength, resilience, and determination” across the country, and her two documentaries highlight her mental health challenges and resilience.

Nellie Bly

She may not have set out to be a mental health activist, but Nellie Bly’s journalism is an example of exercising press freedom to make a difference.

Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran but known more commonly by her pen name, Nellie Bly became a journalist after she wrote a letter to the editor of a Pittsburgh newspaper in response to an 1885 article that argued women’s role is to raise children and tend to the home. Her letter, which argued for more opportunities for women, impressed the newspaper’s editor so much that he offered her a job. She moved to New York City to look for an opportunity to write more broadly than about women’s issues. The New York World publisher Joseph Pulitzer and editor John Cockerill commissioned her to write about the Blackwell’s Island mental asylum. She was 23 when she went undercover, allowing herself to be temporarily committed, and documented neglect, abuse and poor conditions for the people held there.

The 1887 investigative series, republished as a book, helped lead to a budget increase for New York’s charities and corrections department of nearly $1 million per year, with $50,000 for Blackwell’s, which closed seven years later.

Rosalynn Carter

First ladies have a tradition of engaging in advocacy from their government-adjacent positions. Rosalynn Carter’s mental health advocacy began when she encountered stories of constituents’ mental health struggles during her husband’s political campaigns.

As first lady of Georgia in the 1970s and of the U.S. from 1977 to 1981, she exercised her free speech rights to speak about the importance of mental health care access. She petitioned by testifying and lobbying for the passage of a mental health systems bill, which passed in 1980, and as recently as 2008 for the passage of further mental health support legislation.

She also used her freedom of assembly to gather policy and mental health experts to organize collectively for change. She used her freedoms of speech and press to publish several books about the health care system.

Diana Chao

As a teen, Diana Chao wanted to help other young people who, like her, lived with mental illness.

She started a club, using her freedoms of assembly, speech and press to gather with students at her high school to write anonymous letters of support to others. She later expanded the group’s programs to include peer training and advocacy on mental health policy. Letters to Strangers, which she founded in 2013, has expanded to reach 72 countries. “Handwriting a letter forces us to slow down and really think about every stroke we make,” she has said of the program that helps both letter writers and recipients find and share their voices.

In 2018, Chao won the Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Award, and she is the founder and executive director of Letters to Strangers.

Dorothea Dix

In the mid-1800s, many people with mental illness were imprisoned. Dorothea Dix exercised her freedoms of speech and petition across the country, advocating for the establishment of separate facilities focused on treatment and recovery for mental health.

As a young woman, Dix experienced mental breakdowns and traveled from the U.S. to England to receive helpful treatment, where she also met with reformers pursuing changes to the mental health care system. When she returned to the U.S., she taught at a women’s correctional facility and noticed the challenges for women with mental illness there. She traveled to Massachusetts and around the country, learning about jail conditions and working with lawmakers to establish and fund asylums. In March 1845, New Jersey passed a law for which she had petitioned, leading to the opening of an asylum in Trenton, one of about 30 she helped found or expand. She petitioned before Congress in 1854 for a mental health care bill that passed but was vetoed.

In subsequent decades, many asylums did not focus on recovery as she initially wished, leading later advocates to continue her efforts at awareness and support.

Selena Gomez

Since she was a Disney Channel star, Selena Gomez has been in the public eye, and that’s not easy, especially while experiencing mental health and chronic physical conditions.

In 2020, Gomez revealed that she’d begun seeking mental health treatment in 2014 to treat bipolar disorder and that getting a diagnosis helped ensure support and acceptance. She has since exercised her freedom of speech at the White House, the Mental Health Youth Action Forum and other venues about the importance of mental health care. She received an innovation in mental health advocacy award from Stanford University in 2022, the same year she used her freedoms of speech and press to release her “My Mind and Me” documentary.

She also started the Rare Impact Fund, which provides grants to nonprofits around the world to expand mental health access, especially for youth.

Hailey Hardcastle

As a high school junior, Hailey Hardcastle had a panic attack one day at her school in Oregon.

She realized that unlike physical illness, the school didn’t consider mental health a valid reason for an excused absence, so students had to lie, take an unexcused absence, which can lead to consequences, or remain in class while experiencing mental health challenges. She also learned that Oregon had higher-than-average rates of student chronic absenteeism and youth suicide.

That summer at a student council camp, she and other students used their freedom of petition to help draft and advocate for a state bill that would allow students to take “mental health days” in Oregon, making it easier for students to open up about their mental health and get help if needed and enabling school administrators to better track students’ well-being. The students’ petitioning was successful, and the bill passed in 2019.

Michael Phelps

Being a decorated Olympic swimmer can come with stress, pressure, and, as Michael Phelps discovered, post-competition depression.

Phelps has exercised his freedom of speech to publicly discuss his experiences with post-Olympic depression since 2004, including seeking in-patient treatment in 2014. He’s described how seeking treatment has helped him see himself as more than a swimmer, and now he works to support men and athletes seeking mental health care. His foundation supports efforts to boost young people’s and athletes’ physical and mental health, and it released an educational video series to help parents and caregivers support kids’ mental health.

“I think [the stigma] is dropping a little bit and for me, it’s incredible to see that. It’s incredible to see people talking about their own journey their own way, and sharing their own stories,” Phelps said. He has also used his freedoms of speech and press to share his mental health story in two documentaries, including the 2017 film “Angst.”

Nancy Reagan

Like Rosalynn Carter, first lady Nancy Reagan’s mental health advocacy began on the campaign trail, focusing on substance use among young people.

In 1980, on a stop in New York, she said she was stunned by the prevalence of drug use and impressed by young people who recovered from substance use disorders. She began to use her First Amendment freedoms to advocate for awareness around youth drug use. “Understanding peer pressure and understanding why they turn to drugs is ... the first step in solving the problem,” she told “Good Morning America” in 1981. As first lady from 1981 to 1989, the effort grew into the “Just Say No” campaign, which aimed to help young people become aware of and resist peer pressure to experiment with drugs. The slogan originated from her advice to an Oakland, California, student who’d asked what she should do if someone offered her drugs.

Reagan traveled the country, appeared on TV news shows, sitcoms and documentaries, and wrote articles, exercising her freedoms of speech and press to promote the campaign.

Mychal Threets

Sometimes compared to “Reading Rainbow’s” LeVar Burton and children’s television icon Mister Rogers, Mychal Threets is perhaps today’s most famous librarian.

He became popular on social media, especially TikTok, where he used his freedoms of speech and press to publish uplifting videos supporting literacy and mental health. In early 2024, when he left his public library job, he spoke publicly about his own ongoing mental health challenges. He has since become the PBS resident librarian, where he continues to make videos for children and readers of all ages. In September 2025, he announced he would be the host of a rebooted “Reading Rainbow.”

Threets also used his press and speech rights to co-author a children’s book about libraries, hosts the “Thoughts About Feelings” podcast about mental well-being, and participates in California’s Live Beyond mental health campaign.

Mental health activists speak, write, assemble and petition for their cause

Just as others have used the First Amendment to advocate for causes that are important to them, mental health activists have exercised these same freedoms to advance theirs.

Through speech and press, many share their stories — by writing books and articles, hosting podcasts, holding events and more — to raise awareness and help others find connection and support. Some exercise their right to assemble to collectively advocate for mental health policies and support each other. Others petition the government by testifying to legislators, lobbying for laws and igniting public support for mental health care.

All are using their First Amendment freedoms to support an issue that matters to them.

Karen Hansen is a staff writer at Freedom Forum. She can be reached at [email protected].