For two hours each week over the course of 10 weeks, individuals dealing with mental health challenges can tell their stories and learn coping strategies together without feeling the sting of stigma.

Where do you go when you’re feeling lost? Alone? Anxious? For hundreds of people, the new Innovations Community Center, which opened in May, is that place. It’s sort of a mental health community center, but it isn’t just for people with diagnoses. It is for anyone who needs a supportive environment to go to.

The state's public health department is providing several Bay Area nonprofits with millions of dollars over the next five years in order to reduce mental health disparities among LGBTQs and others.

Over the past two years, On the Move’s Innovations Project has orchestrated a community conversation about mental illness and its stigma, which shrivels lives. The group brought together 30 people – service providers and mental health consumers – to start the conversation about mental illness as well as aid an under-served community.

After Napa County officials held several public meetings aimed at banishing the stigma that surrounds mental illness, one fact became clear: More work needs to be done.