Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Jennifer Ayers-Moore speaks at One City, One Book event

Nathaniel Anthony Ayers is a musician who is the subject of the book and the movie The Soloist. Ayers suffers from schizophrenia and lived homeless on the streets of Los Angeles, but now his sister Jennifer Ayers-Moore has established a foundation, The Nathaniel Anthony Ayers Foundation (NAAF) to help other “artistically gifted, mentally ill” individuals. She reports about Nathaniel, “He’s doing much better. He now has a great support system which is fabulous. I’m able to contact him most any time and he’s doing very well. He’s even done some traveling recently, which is new, which is a miracle actually, so he’s doing well.”

Ayers-Moore spoke October 20th at Guilford Technical Community College (GTCC) to students and members of the community as part of the One City, One Book program of Greensboro, NC. Program participants read The Soloist. She said the book and the movie are slightly different yet they both teach an important lesson. “I’m happy that the students were able to read the book to get more insight on what life is like as far as mental health is concerned and to give them an idea to not be judgemental about people that have mental illness.”

One if the primary objectives of the Foundation is stopping the stigma of mental illness.