This is an edited transcript of President Obama’s remarks to the participants of the National Conference on Mental Health, held in the White House on June 3, 2013. Our coverage of the National Conference on Mental Health will continue here tomorrow with a summary of the conference.
President Obama: Â Thank you so much. Everybody please have a seat. Thank you so much. Welcome to the White House. Thank you Janelle for that introduction and sharing your story and making such a difference through your organization. We’re really proud to have you here. I want to thank Secretary Sebelius, Secretary Arnie Duncan, Secretary Eric Shinseki, for their leadership and helping organizing this event. I also want to acknowledge some outstanding members of congress who are here and who care deeply about this issue.
Finally, I want to thank all of you for participating in this National Conference on Mental Health. We wanted to bring together folks who suffered from mental illness, and families who supported them. We wanted to bring together advocates and educators, faith leaders, veterans, local officials.