A Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude honors graduate of Ohio State University, Barbara Demming Lurie continued her graduate studies in clinical psychology at the University of Wisconsin.  She spent the next two decades heading the Patients’ Rights Bureau for LAC-DMH on weekdays and on weekends, penning a restaurant review column for a daily Los Angeles newspaper.  Her work, while at the Department, to help craft and pass legislation protecting  rights of mental health clients and other efforts on their behalf earned her “Lifetime Achievement” and “Advocate of the Century” Awards from the California Association of Mental Health Patients’ Rights Advocates (CAMHPRA) and a picture in Newsweek Magazine.  After she left the Department, she became Director of Programs and Research for the Entertainment Industries Council, Inc.  She was then asked to head the Mental Health Media Partnership, a nonprofit organization sponsored by USC and the University of Pennsylvania, to work with the entertainment industry, promoting understanding of mental health issues. Besides her current position as a consultant working on issues related to mental health and the media, she is Assistant Director of the Integrated Behavioral Health Project (IBHP), an initiative of the California Endowment and the Tides Center.

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