Jono Wilde

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT JONO WILDE

In February of 2024 I lost my father to suicide. And as tragic as his death was, it was just one of approximately 131 suicides in America that day.It would take just 11 minutes after my father’s passing for another suicide to occur in this country. And then again 11 minutes later. And again, and again…The nightmare of my father’s suicide awakened me to the mental health epidemic in this country. As it turns out, his story is the rule, not the exception. How is that possible? How did we let things get so bad - for ourselves, our families and our fellow citizens?The truth of the matter is that mental health is inseparable from physical health, yet mental illness is often excluded from insurance coverage, underfunded in public health systems, and even criminalized. This creates a two-tiered system in which those with mental illness are denied equal access to care, due process, and life itself. This current binary creates two standards so substantively different that it wouldn’t even qualify as ‘separate but equal’. This paradigm, in other words, wouldn’t have satisfied an unjust standard in the 1950s and yet, here it stands in 2025.As Executive Director of The Good Life Movement, we will lead a Mental Health Civil Rights Movement. This is a new approach that will frame mental health as a human rights and social justice issue, coalesce a fragmented and siloed mental health sector, and unite our collective efforts around passing a Mental Health Civil Rights Act.Join the movement: