HURON There will be a familiar face in the crowd at the NAMI-South Dakota 2025 Conference titled, Hope & Healing: Stronger Together planned Thursday and Friday, Oct. 16 and 17, at the Huron Event Center.
For Lois Knoke of Huron, this will be the 21st state conference she has attended. The conference will be held from 1 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 16, and from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 17. Registration begins at noon Thursday.
The NAMI South Dakota 2025 Annual Conference will cover a variety of topics including wellness, mental health, mental illness, 988 information, suicide prevention information, and more.
Over the past 21 years, Knoke has become a strong advocate for NAMI, which is a grassroots organization dedicated to providing education and support to those dealing with mental illness and their families.
Knoke has shared her personal story more than 70 times across the state at schools and other venues interested in mental health through In Our Own Voice, a program through NAMI that helps people share personal stories about living with mental illness and achieving recovery.
My first conference was in Sioux Falls in 2004, Knoke said. I was asked to be on a panel of consumers from Community Counseling Services to say how we were being helped with counseling and guidance. I shared how angry I was, how hurt I was. Halfway through I cried.
The support and understanding she received from those around her at that first conference helped her know that she wasnt alone.
I opened up and shared my life, and that is where the healing has come, Knoke added.
NAMI-South Dakota state director Sheri Nelson of Sioux Falls said the conference goal is to educate and empower those who attend.
We want to build connections, and the conference will provide a safe space for people to connect and share their experiences, Nelson said. We bring speakers in that focus on mental health practices, treatment and community resources.
This years conference will feature guest speakers Angela Kennecke on Thursday and Risdon Slate on Friday.
Kennecke will speak at 1:15 p.m. Thursday in the Dakota Ballroom.
Kennecke is a veteran investigative journalist with a mission to eradicate the stigma surrounding addiction and find solutions to the overdose epidemic. Her dedication took on personal urgency when she learned that her 21-year-old daughter, Emily, died from fentanyl poisoning. Since then, she has spoken tirelessly about the drug crisis and founded Emilys Hope, a charity offering hope and treatment scholarships to families struggling with addiction.
Emilys Hope has also developed a groundbreaking elementary school prevention curriculum, runs a post-overdose response team and holds support groups for families.
Slate will speak at 12:30 p.m. Friday in the Dakota Ballroom. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder 35 years ago, and since that time, he has become a professor, a trainer, writer and inspirational speaker.
In all these roles, I have a mission: to combat the stigma surrounding mental illness, Slate said. Thus, I have advocated in the classroom, through training criminal justice practitioners, via publications, as a national member of the board of directors of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and by testimony before the U.S. Congress.
He will also be signing copies of his new memoir, Resilience in the Storm, where he shares the dark reality and hard truth of his lifes struggles.
Along with the keynote speakers, there will be numerous educational sessions held throughout the two-day event, including mental health challenges in rural communities, trauma adaptation and resilience, and sensory processing and mental health, to name just a few. Find a full agenda on the NAMI-South Dakota homepage under Annual Conference.
The conference will also include meetings of a family support group and NAMI-Huron mental health support group, both beginning at 7 p.m. Thursday. The NAMI-Huron group will be led by Knoke and co-facilitator Bob Pugsley.
Nelson said she is looking forward to the 2025 event and is eager to learn more about dealing with mental illness.
I want to encourage people to attend the conference, Nelson said. We want to focus on the community and how we can build each other up.
All the programming offered through NAMI-South Dakota is free, and donations are always welcome. Next years conference will be held in Watertown.
We appreciate all the generous donors and sponsors that have given for the conference, Nelson said. We are still taking sponsorships.
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