Member since December 2025
Andi Chrisman is a mental health advocate, public speaker, and founder of Betterfly Wellness. For more than 12 years, she has shared her lived experience of recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder and chronic suicidality to help others better understand mental health challenges and the realities of navigating them.
Through honesty, humor, and relatable storytelling, Andi creates conversations around suicide prevention, mental health stigma, practical coping skills, recovery, and what support actually feels like during moments of crisis. Her presentations focus on making mental health information approachable, realistic, and usable in everyday life, while offering audiences tools they can apply to their own lives or when supporting others.
Drawing from both lived experience and professional training, Andi provides a perspective that bridges personal experience with mental health education. She is especially passionate about topics such as Borderline Personality Disorder, chronic suicidality, long-term survival mode, recovery, resilience, and navigating mental health systems and resources.
Andi has presented for hospitals, nursing schools, police academies, Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) trainings, psychiatric units, community organizations, and public events throughout Virginia. She is trained in Mental Health First Aid, Youth Mental Health First Aid, WRAP, ASIST, safeTALK, Mental Health America’s Consumer Empowerment and Leadership Training (CELT), RRS Peer Specialist Training, and multiple NAMI education programs.
As the founder of Betterfly Wellness, Andi's mission is to provide practical mental health conversations, coping tools, and hope through guidance from someone who gets it.
I'm passionate about making mental health conversations feel human. Too often, people leave presentations with information but no idea how to apply it when they're overwhelmed, supporting a loved one, or facing a crisis themselves. I love helping people understand what mental illness, recovery, and support actually feel like from a lived-experience perspective.
I'm especially passionate about topics like suicide prevention, Borderline Personality Disorder, chronic suicidality, long-term survival mode, and practical coping skills. My goal is always to leave people with something useful they can take with them long after the presentation ends.
My speaking career began through NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), where I spent more than a decade sharing my story and providing mental health education throughout Virginia. During that time, I presented in hospitals, nursing schools, police academies, psychiatric units, and community organizations.
When NAMI ended the local program I was involved with, I saw a gap in the community. The presentations were still needed, the conversations were still important, and people were still looking for practical, relatable mental health education. Rather than let that work disappear, I founded Betterfly Wellness to continue providing those conversations and resources.
Today, Betterfly Wellness allows me to expand that mission by combining lived experience, professional training, and practical coping tools to help people better understand mental health and recovery.
My speaking career began through NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), where I spent more than a decade sharing my story and providing mental health education throughout Virginia. During that time, I presented in hospitals, nursing schools, police academies, psychiatric units, and community organizations.
When NAMI ended the local program I was involved with, I saw a gap in the community. The presentations were still needed, the conversations were still important, and people were still looking for practical, relatable mental health education. Rather than let that work disappear, I founded Betterfly Wellness to continue providing those conversations and resources.
Today, Betterfly Wellness allows me to expand that mission by combining lived experience, professional training, and practical coping tools to help people better understand mental health and recovery.
