Dr. Glenda Wrenn MD

Upcoming Speaker at 2022 Montana Conference on Mental Illness

In 2009, NAMI Montana did our first national legislation.  It was to improve the screening process for mental health conditions for service members deploying and returning from combat.

The Kalispell Daily Interlake article about the legislation passing that year.

One of the stories that wasn’t reported was that the idea for that screening legislation started with a NAMI Montana family after a tragedy. We really didn’t know which clinician could vet the idea to see if it could make as big of a difference as we thought. Dr. Glenda Wrenn was studying Post Traumatic Stress at the University of Pennsylvania at the time. We both graduated from West Point in 1999. She was always brilliant, funny, and ready to step into help. I called in a favor to ask her to look over the legislation. Dr. Wrenn gave it her thumbs up and we took it to Congress.

In the past 13 years, Dr. Wrenn went from NAMI Montana’s secret weapon to nationally-recognized mental health and equity advocate. Dr Wrenn is now on the national NAMI board and was the first person featured in NAMI’s new podcast “Hope Starts with Us” hosted by NAMI CEO Dan Gillison.