Robert Lee Sutherland Seminar: Past Themes
Looking back at the history of our signature public conveningAbout the Seminar
Since 1978, the Hogg Foundation has convened the Robert Lee Sutherland Seminar (RLS) to increase awareness about mental health concepts, such as recovery, integrated health, and barriers to well-being. Named in honor of our first executive director, Dr. Robert Lee Sutherland, this event offers Texans a chance to reflect on critical issues in mental health, and promote innovation and collaboration among providers, advocates, consumers, and people with lived experience and their families.
Past Themes
2025 | Growing Together: Building Capacity for Collective Wellness
San Antonio
Building capacity, in its broadest sense, is the process of strengthening a non-profit’s ability to achieve goals and adapt to change by developing skills, resources, and processes that will help them on their journey.
Building upon this theme, the seminar presented four concurrent learning tracks: Building Partnerships and Collaboration, Community Outreach and Engagement, Data and Evaluation, Grant Writing and Fund Development.
2019 | Working Together for Rural Well-Being
Bastrop
With a theme born out of the foundation’s new mission to transform how communities promote mental health in everyday life, this seminar focused on community-based approaches to addressing resilience, mental health, and well-being in rural communities.
Topics addressed included community collaboration, change, engaging historically excluded groups, social determinants of mental health, and methods for inclusive dialogue.
2016 | PeerFest
Corpus Christi
PeerFest was an educational and celebratory event for Texans who have faced mental health challenges and are on a journey to recovery.
Modeled, in part, after the National Alternatives Conference, PeerFest provided a safe, welcoming environment for people with lived mental health experience to feel empowered to improve their well-being. Designed and organized by and for people with lived mental health experience, the event provided opportunities to learn about well-being tools, explore taboo or inaccessible topics, and connect with peers.
2014 | The State of Mental Health Recovery: Research, Training, and Practice
Austin
Recovery is defined by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration as “a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential.”
This year’s seminar focused on mental health recovery as one of the most important aims of behavioral health services and the ongoing transformation in standards of recovery-oriented practice.
2012 | Spiritual Crossroads: Faith, Mental Health, and the African American Community
Fort Worth
This seminar explored the impact of spirituality on African American mental health, increased awareness of existing community-based mental health and wellness strategies, and facilitated networking among key regional stakeholders.
2010 | A Call to Action: Achieving Mental Health, Recovery, and Wellness Together
Nacogdoches
This year’s seminar worked to establish a common knowledge base and dialogue about mental health, recovery, and wellness and offered perspectives from mental health consumers, youth, and their families.
2008 | Integrated Health: Connecting Body and Mind
Austin
Local, state, and national experts met to discuss integrated health care – an emerging approach that aims to improve healthcare outcomes by treating physical and behavioral illnesses concurrently.
The seminar sought to establish a common knowledge base about emerging practices, existing barriers, and effective solutions.
2006 | Transforming Mental Health Services in Texas: Building Bridges Between Cultural Competence and Evidence-Based Practice
Houston
This year’s gathering focused on modifying and implementing evidence-based practices (EBP) to provide treatments consistent with diverse cultural experiences. Sessions explored cultural competence and EBP as avenues to promote linguistically- and culturally-appropriate treatment, training, and education.
2004 | Safe and Appropriate Behavioral Interventions: Changing the Culture of Care
Austin
Convening participants from a number of behavioral health agencies, this year’s event explored existing standards and practices for emergency interventions used with persons with behavioral disorders. The seminar aimed to begin building a common vocabulary and a data collection framework to better implement federal restraint and seclusion standards within the context of providing quality services.
2002 | Juvenile Offenders with Mental Illness
Austin
This year’s seminar brought together community teams to develop plans for addressing the needs of juvenile offenders with mental illness. It aimed to promote coordination and collaboration of juvenile justice agencies (both probation and corrections), local and state law enforcement, mental health officials, and community members in effectively identifying, treating, and supervising juvenile offenders with severe emotional disturbances in ways that promotes public safety, public health, institutional order, and maximization of available resources.
1998 | Ethnic Minority Mental Health in Texas
Austin
Focusing on identifying the most pressing mental health needs faced by ethnic and racial minorities in Texas and proposing strategies for addressing them, the seminar brought together focus groups with mental health consumers and families, service providers, and administrators in Austin and Houston representing African American, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian American/Pacific Islander populations.
The event aimed to use findings of the seminar to help shape the foundation’s minority mental health programs, to improve access to and quality of services, and to impact public policy.
1996 | Mental Health for Children in Houston
Houston
This year’s seminar brought together key stakeholders committed to improving the quality of life for Houston’s children. It focused on encouraging the collaborative design, funding, and implementation of a model program for children that could be replicated in other urban centers.
The event led to the establishment of the collaborative funding alliance known as the Greater Houston Collaborative for Children consisting of more than two dozen funding agencies and providers of children’s services.
1994 | Psychiatric Assessment of Mexican-Origin Populations
San Antonio
This year’s convening assembled a diverse group of experts from Texas and Mexico to discuss adapting various psychiatric and diagnostic tools for use in the border region. Behavioral scientists discussed research and training opportunities for using psychiatric assessment techniques to develop collaborative research, training activities, and strategies for implementing cross-cultural psychiatric research in the border region. We also provided an overview of current and past collaborative research efforts.
1992 | Share Opportunities for Schools and Communities
Austin
The goal of this year’s seminar was to foster improvement in human development and establish a vision of the “school of the future” as an opportunity for providing multiple support services to students and their families.
Leaders from a variety of fields gathered to examine school-linked services for children and families, ranging from prenatal care through high school. They shared information about the nature and effectiveness of present-day school services, policy options for implementing such services, and future prospects for parents and teachers to participate in educational reform.
1990 | Mental Health Research in Texas
Austin
Coinciding with the Hogg Foundation’s fiftieth anniversary, this seminar highlighted the best that Texas has to offer in advancing the scientific frontiers of the mental health field and the underlying behavioral sciences.
It brought together almost 200 Texas researchers with the goals of:
- Systematically reviewing recent and current mental health research in Texas and identifying both its strengths and challenges
- Broadening and strengthening networks for collaboration among mental health researchers in Texas
- Developing strategies to enhance the quality and increase the quantity of mental health research in Texas
1988 | Community Care of the Chronically Mentally Ill
Austin
This year’s seminar brought together individuals committed to improving the care and treatment of the chronically mentally ill in the state of Texas. Delegates from around the state participated in four task groups which reviewed and discussed the activities and concerns of the Hogg Foundation’s Commission on Community Care of the Mentally Ill.
1986 | Mental Health Issues of the Mexican-Origin Populations in Texas
Austin
This year’s seminar focused on mental health services for the Mexican-origin population in Texas. Attendees explored the incidence and prevalence of mental health problems and associated risk factors among people of Mexican origin, prevention and treatment programs that are most suitable, and the impact of economics and political decision-making processes on mental health services for this population.
The seminar convened scholars, practitioners, and state leaders, offered an overview of present mental health needs and services, identified the most pressing challenges, and proposed viable solutions to these challenges.
1984 | Looking Forward: Texas and Its Elderly
Austin
Focusing on current issues and future dilemmas related to the aging population in our society, the seminar brought together participants of diverse ages, economic circumstances, educational backgrounds, and ethnic groups from across the state. Attendees explored their common interest in the experiences of the state’s aging population and a determination to affect positive change on their behalf.
1982 | Houston’s Children in Crisis and Ima Hogg Centennial
Houston
In combination with the centennial celebration of Miss Ima Hogg’s birth, the event celebrated her contributions to mental health services for children and families in Houston.
Attendees discussed issues impacting ill and disabled children, culturally diverse children, educationally and vocationally underserved children, behavioral problems in children, and responsibilities for children.
1980 | Private Initiative in Support of Public Purpose
Austin
Representatives of the public sector convened to discuss the means by which the private and public sector can better help one another meet their common goals. Participants examined effective roles played by foundations in mobilizing grassroots support for mental health services and discussed and evaluated potential roles for the private sector in the area of mental health.
1978 | Mental Health for the People of Texas
Austin
Held at the LBJ Presidential Library on the University of Texas campus, the inaugural Robert Lee Sutherland seminar brought together more than 1,000 delegates for three days to examine the implications of the President’s Commission on Mental Health Report for the state of Texas. First Lady Rosalyn Carter served as the keynote speaker.