About

That Kind of Madness

The year is 1995. I’m walking in front of the White House in D.C. with a new friend from a Jewish Leadership Conference for teens. I am about to go to college in Boston to study journalism. I turn my head quickly and notice a one-woman display of placards talking about the government causing brain damage. A disheveled woman stands near them. She is shouting this nonsense. My friend Josh then turns to me and says, “I think she has brain damage.” We pass and he starts walking quickly. But something in me wanted to stop. Something resonated in me that day. I knew I had to do something to change the conversation.

 A Mile a Minute with Alexis Zinkerman is a blog for mental health journalism. I will give survival strategies, updates in mental health policy, feature personal stories from time to time, book reviews, author interviews, and the science of mental health.

A Mile a Minute Fresh Takes on Mental Health serves to educate, advocate, and inform those in and outside of the mental health community about issues and policy related to mental health. Through interviews, profiles, and other journalistic devices, A Mile a Minute’s goal is to erase stigma. Part art, part journalism, this blog functions as an online news magazine serving people with mental illness, those who love them, policymakers, and mental health professionals. Personal stories are vital to this blog’s growth as one life can shed light on a thousand, inspiring many on their own healing journeys.

I have interviewed on this blog influencers, thought leaders, advocates, activists and authors who have joined in my conversation. I have also written on topics including mental health and law enforcement, the non-profit Art with Impact, and reviewed a This is My Brave Show. Guests have included: Melody Moezzi, Kathy Flaherty, Hannah Blum, Rudy Caseres, Jamie Lowe, David Leite, Dyane Harwood, Nikki Webber Allen, Steve Leder, Joel Kutz, Gabe Howard, Lauren Hope, Caroline Mazel-Carlton, Carrie Cantwell, Conor Bezane, Sarah Fader, Karen Kangas, Temple Grandin, JoDee Blanco, world thought leader on bullying, and the editor/agent Betsy Lerner, Jennifer Marshall, co Founder of This is My Brave, among others. I hope to include many more voices and many more interviews. 

Alexis (Maislen) Zinkerman is a writer, journalist, and blogger at A Mile a Minute Fresh Takes on Mental Health  [http://amileaminute.blog]. She holds a Master’s in Writing from DePaul University and an MLIS from Dominican University. She has been published in the Hartford Courant, the Hartford Advocate, the Hartford Business Journal, We-Ha.com, CTNewsJunkie.com, Hadassah magazine, OC87 Recovery Diaries, the Shore Line Times in Madison, CT and many others.

Her knowledge as a mental health consumer as well as a journalist interplay in her life’s work to eradicate stigma and educate about the science of mental illness and people with disabilities.

She has worked with the Chicago chapter and the national organization of the Depression Bipolar Support Alliance as well as the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ Connecticut affiliate. She has appeared in BP Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, and the Chicago Tribune on topics of mental illness, as well as being featured in the Psychology Today book Taming Bipolar. She is a blog columnist for the International Bipolar Foundation and has written for Stigma Fighters and Narratives of Hope. She also authored a novella about teen suicide, Brooklyn’s Song, available on Amazon. Her web site is www.alexisazinkerman.com.