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The Treatment Handoff Is Part of Care
A person can complete withdrawal management successfully and still lose the next step of care. A residential client can make meaningful progress and then leave without a confirmed outpatient appointment. A receiving program may know that a referral is coming but lack the medication list, risk...
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How to Dismantle Self-Stigma in Schizophrenia
Hi, my name is Dr. Tracy Hicks. I am a mother, a friend, an educator, a mentor, a wife, a psychiatric healthcare provider...among many other parts of my identity. How I introduce myself is an important element of how I view myself and how the outside world views me. My experience with...
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Remembering Semyon F. Gluzman, MD: A Psychiatric Hero and Role Model
Most psychiatrists whose names are recognized beyond their professional colleagues have made significant intellectual contributions to our understanding of human behavior through their explorations of psychology and its neurologic underpinnings. Semyon F. Gluzman, MD, who died earlier this year at...
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AI/Agentic AI Behavioral Health Systems Ready for New Privacy Regulations
For years, many behavioral health leaders treated privacy rule 42 CFR Part 2 as a policy and training issue. In 2026, that is no longer enough. What has changed is the environment around the rule. Substance use disorder (SUD) records now move across EHRs, referral networks, analytics...
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The Future of CCBHCs: From Program Expansion to System Transformation
As policymakers search for solutions to the nation's mental health and substance use crisis, Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs) represent one of the most promising opportunities for meaningful system change. CCBHCs were established through the Protecting Access to Medicare Act...
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Shifting the Weight: Addressing Substance Use Disorder in Nursing
Substance use disorder (SUD) impacts both the individual experiencing it and everyone in their life. SUD does not discriminate and affects people from all walks of life, regardless of age, occupation, economic circumstances, ethnic background, or gender. Healthcare professionals are not immune, but...
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The Search Before the Session: How People Actually Look for Behavioral Health Care Online and Where They Get Stuck
For a growing number of Americans, the path to behavioral health care does not begin in a doctor's office or with a referral from a friend. It begins with a search box. Before anyone fills out an intake form or sits in a waiting room, they type a question into a search engine, and what generates in...
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The Kitchen Problem No One Talks About in Behavioral Health: How Residential Treatment Programs Are Rethinking Food Service and What It Means for the People in Their Care
Someone enters residential treatment. They have made one of the hardest decisions of their life. They give up their phone, their schedule, their routine. For the next 28 to 90 days, almost every aspect of their day is structured for them. When they wake up. When they go to therapy. When they...
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Suffering in Silence: A Police Officer’s Mental Health Journey After a Critical Incident
Editor's Note: This article contains first-person descriptions of self-harm, substance abuse, suicidal ideation, and other difficult experiences. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out for support. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text at...
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Elevated Use of Cannabis, Nicotine Among U.S. Adults Continues Into 2025
National Survey Finds Alcohol, Cigarette, Other Substance Use at Low Levels In 2025, adults in the United States reported using cannabis at or near record-high levels, continuing a long-term trend of increasing use. Nicotine vaping also remained high among young adults. These findings are based...
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Polysubstance Use Is Rewriting the Rules of Addiction Medicine
Key Takeaways: Fentanyl increasingly contains sedative adulterants like xylazine and medetomidine, plus stimulants, which is complicating standard opioid use disorder treatment protocols. Xylazine's own withdrawal syndrome and its masking of opioid withdrawal signs are pushing providers...
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Governor Hochul Announces $21 Million to Expand Emergency Programs for Individuals Experiencing a Mental Health Crisis
Comprehensive psychiatric emergency programs provide 24/7 emergency services, extended observation, and crisis outreach. Funding to establish new programs at hospitals in New York City, the Hudson Valley, and northern New York regions; help improve four others. On August 10, 2026, Governor...
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New Screening Approach Detects Childhood Mental Health Risks Traditional Methods Miss
At a Glance Screening for home and family stresses may help identify children at risk for depression and sleep disorders that traditional adversity screening misses. This type of screening could be used to identify and intervene with children at risk of mental health...
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New York State Announces $660,000 Awarded to Strengthen Suicide Prevention Efforts in Five Rural Counties
Funding Will Support the Establishment of Sustainable Prevention Activities in Schools, Clinical Settings, and in the Community Office of Mental Health's Suicide Prevention Center of New York to Assist in Implementing Local Initiatives Statewide The New York State Office of Mental Health...
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Earlier Risk Detection Is the Biggest Breakthrough in Mental Health AI
In the last few years, an abundance of consumer-facing artificial intelligence (AI)-powered mental health tools have appeared on the market. The prevailing narrative is that generative AI can help close the gap between profuse mental health needs and insufficient care capacity. Yet there are...
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New York City Should Become the Site of a National Museum of Mental Health
New York City prides itself on being a center of cultural institutions, boasting proudly on its tourism website that “there's an institution for every interest in the City.” The city is the site of roughly 170 museums! Yet, inexplicably, there is currently no museum focused on improving public...
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How Policy and Advocacy Shape Behavioral Health Care Systems in New York State
Over the last several years, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has invested over $2 billion in strengthening all aspects of the state's mental health system. Transforming one of the largest public mental health systems in the country requires strategic vision. This process has been informed by...
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Behavioral Health News Spotlight on Excellence: An Interview With Dr. Jorge Petit, Executive Deputy Commissioner and Director of Community Services, Division of Mental Hygiene, NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Overview In this interview, Dr. Jorge Petit, Executive Deputy Commissioner and Director of Community Services for the Division of Mental Hygiene at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, discusses what has changed and what remains constant in New York City's behavioral health...
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Showing Up Matters: The Power of Relationship-Based Advocacy in Behavioral Health
Behavioral Health Advocates: Association for Community Living, Coalition of Medication-Assisted Treatment Providers and Advocates of New York State (COMPA), Families Together in New York State, InUnity Alliance, Mental Health Association in New York State, National Alliance on Mental Illness New...
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What Looked Like Defiance Was Actually Grief: The Healing Power of Peer Support in Children’s Mental Health
Ten-year-old Marcus stopped talking after his father was incarcerated. At first, school staff assumed he was angry. Then they thought he was being oppositional. Over time, his silence became impossible to ignore. He stopped participating in class discussions. He isolated himself during lunch. He...
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Building the Missing Middle: How Advocacy Helped Create a New Behavioral Health Intervention for New Yorkers With Serious Mental Illness
For decades, our behavioral health systems have faced the growing challenge of meeting the needs of people with serious mental illness (SMI). In New York, where the Institute for Community Living (ICL) operates, and most places in the country, demand for services far exceeds supply. Furthermore,...
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How New CMS Remote Therapeutic Monitoring Policy Is Expanding Access and What It Means for Your Practice
Therapy clients don't live their lives in sessions; they live them in the hours and days in between. The most beneficial work can happen during this in-between time: responding to triggers, practicing coping skills, completing valuable homework and exercises. But it is also when clients are most...
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Recovery Works When Coverage Does: The Lifesaving Impact of Medicare’s IOP Expansion
Closing a Critical Coverage Gap in Medicare In 2024, following stalwart efforts by Congress, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, providers, advocacy organizations, and directly-impacted communities alike, Medicare closed a gap in its addiction treatment coverage by adding a benefit...
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Medication-Assisted Treatment on the Ground: How Federal Policy Shifts Are Reshaping Outreach in Brooklyn
Opioid use remains a significant public health threat in the United States, with nearly 80,000 opioid‑involved overdoses reported in 2023—accounting for 76% of all overdoses that year (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2025). As Substance Use Disorder (SUD) continues to affect more...
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Advocacy Through Awareness: Why Patients Need to Know TMS Exists
There is a moment many mental health patients know all too well. It's the moment after another medication change. Another follow-up appointment. Another hopeful start that doesn't provide the relief they need to survive. By the time some patients reach that point, they are exhausted by their...
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Closing the Gap Between Care and Outcomes in Behavioral Health Policy
As behavioral health expands access and continues to trend toward more parity with physical health, the focus is moving from just counting how many people get care to asking whether that care is actually improving lives. How behavioral health organizations consistently and clearly answer that...
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Advocacy’s Strange Bedfellows: How New York’s Landmark Behavioral Health Budget Came to Be
Governor Hochul's Executive Budget for Fiscal Year 2023-2024 (FY 2024) included unprecedented investments in behavioral healthcare and related services for the most vulnerable residents of New York. This emerged in response to widespread homelessness, rapidly rising rates of suicide, and epidemics...
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Strengthening New York’s I/DD System Through Collaboration, Innovation, and Alignment
At a moment when New York's intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) system faces significant challenges, one network chose not to wait for change but to lead it. On March 31, 2026, the New York Integrated Network (NYIN) convened its 13 provider agencies, advocacy partners, and...
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Bridge to Home: Creating an Innovative Pathway From Psychiatric Inpatient Care to Permanent Housing and Longer-Term Wellbeing
For many New Yorkers living with serious mental illness, leaving the hospital does not mean they will find stability. Instead, discharge often marks the beginning of another unfortunate cycle — from psychiatric units to shelters, from shelters back to emergency rooms, and sometimes back to the...
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Advocacy: The Power of the Collective Voice
Policy-making can solve systemic problems, but we can only achieve true behavioral healthcare reform with adequate financial resources. Advocating for public support for mental healthcare takes time, persistence, and a group effort. One of the most successful examples of collaboration in New...
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How Federal Policy Is Reshaping the Funding of Youth Behavioral Health Treatment
The behavioral health crisis among adolescents is not a new story. For decades, clinicians, researchers, and policymakers have watched the statistics accumulate: an estimated 80 to 90% of adult substance use disorders have their roots in adolescence; half of all lifetime mental health conditions...
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My Autistic Brother Nearly Died Waiting. Now They Want to Cut What Saved Him.
He stood over me and his companion Steve on the steps leading into the Senate building and prayed, "God, give me the words today." It was March 24, 2026, and my 30-year-old autistic brother Stephen was invited to Capitol Hill to meet with Congressional staffers and share his experience living with...
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Future-Proofing Behavioral Health: Why New York Providers Need Partners Who Can Pivot
New York's behavioral health system moves quickly, and providers feel that pace every day as programs, requirements, and expectations continue to shift. Even when policy changes are designed to improve care or expand access, the process of adjusting to them can place real pressure on program...
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The Policy Landscape of Overdose Prevention Centers and the Path Forward
Key Takeaways: Overdose Prevention Centers (OPCs) are harm reduction facilities that provide many addiction services including medical supervision for those using pre-obtained drugs OPCs have consistently shown that they dramatically reduce overdose mortality and the spread of communicable...
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Illness Anxiety Disorder: When Health Becomes Significantly Feared
Undoubtedly, it is important to be mindful of and proactive about taking care of one's health, such as maintaining annual check-ups or following up with a medical provider when signs of physical ailment arise. However, individuals can also reach a point of excessive concern and anxiety about their...
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When Opioid Narratives Become Policy
For more than a decade, US opioid policy has been guided by a compelling but incomplete story: aggressive pharmaceutical marketing and overprescribing by physicians flooded communities with addictive pills, igniting an epidemic of opioid use disorder (OUD) and death. This narrative drove sweeping...
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The Bar for Behavioral Health Care Just Got Higher: The Workforce to Meet It Is Shrinking
On April 6, 2026, New Jersey adopted NJAC 10:36, new integrated behavioral health program service standards that replaced three separate regulatory frameworks with a single unified standard. Every ambulatory licensed behavioral health program in the state must now coordinate physical and behavioral...
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From Advocacy to Systems Transformation: Dr. Isaac Mawuko Adusu’s Contributions to Disability Policy Reform and the Advancement of Equitable Services
Advocacy in disability and behavioral health services often begins with a simple goal: improving quality of life for individuals and families. Yet meaningful and lasting policy change rarely emerges from isolated efforts. Systems transformation requires strategic leadership, coalition alignment,...
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The Adusu Advocacy Framework: A Strategic Model for Advancing Policy Reform in Developmental Disability Services
Across many countries, systems supporting individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are experiencing significant pressure. Workforce shortages, increasing service demand, and funding constraints have created fragile service environments that test providers, policymakers,...
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Child Welfare and Behavioral Health: Foster Care, Family Court, and the Policy Intersection
Behavioral Health and Trauma Impacts Behavioral health is not a side issue in the child welfare system but rather is a system pressure that is likely to bring families into court in the first place (CDC, 2026). Research indicates that this is a concern. In a systematic review, Engler et al. (2022)...
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Comprehensive Linkage to Care for Individuals Living With HIV Returning From Incarceration: Behavioral Health and Re-Entry Considerations
Comprehensive and expeditious linkage to appropriate care is vital for people being released from correctional facilities who are living with HIV and experience behavioral health conditions. In the United States, the incarcerated population, including prisons and local jails, has an HIV rate of up...
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We Don’t Need More Youth Mental Health Crisis Narratives – We Need to Create Affirming Spaces for Youth to Talk About Their Bodies
These are not kids in crisis. This observation grew increasingly certain as the conversation lingered, and so did the feeling that the conversation would remain painfully unfinished. After we wrapped up our workshop titled Resisting (dis)order and Reclaiming Neuroqueer Body Trust, some of the...
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A Call to Amend New York’s Constitution on Mental Health
For decades, New York has been a national leader in advancing mental health policy. Legislators, advocates, providers, and families have fought tirelessly to secure access to treatment, improve insurance coverage, and reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness. Yet despite these efforts, a...
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How Cities Can Follow Oklahoma City’s Example to Address Residents’ Mental Health Needs Through Coordinated Emergency Response
Over the past three years, Oklahoma City has reimagined its emergency response system to better meet residents' behavioral health needs. The results are already impressive: the city's new alternative response teams have kept thousands of people out of the emergency room and drastically reduced...
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Progress Over Perfection—Why Behavioral Health Policy Momentum Must Translate Into Action Now
For too many people seeking behavioral health support, the first step toward care can feel like a dead end. A referral that leads nowhere. A waitlist that stretches for months. A new provider who asks them to recount their story again and again, each retelling reopening wounds at the very moment...
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Your Electronic Health Record Should Help You Deliver Suicide Care
Many frontline behavioral health teams are expected to deliver suicide-safer care inside systems that were not built to support it. Staff are asked to screen for suicide risk, complete additional assessment when needed, create or update safety plans, coordinate handoffs, complete follow-up, and...
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The Recovery Industry’s Policies Are Killing People and They Won’t Change Unless We Make Them
The first time I watched the recovery system harm someone in real time, it was not a mistake. It was merciful advice in the face of restrictive policy. This person described how he voluntarily walked into a rehab facility after his last binge. He was not intoxicated. He was scared, exhausted,...
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Recovery Policies Consistently Fail When They Ignore Human Behavior
Recovery policies don't fail because people don't want to change; they fail because they're designed for an idealized version of patients that simply doesn't exist. Policies are built in committee rooms, around rational decision-making, clear consequences, and personal responsibility. However, the...
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A Policy Lens on Psychiatric Overprescribing: Federal Priorities and Provider Impact
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) continues to emphasize its commitment to strengthening behavioral health care, including mental health and substance use treatment. In June, the agency announced more than $700 million in new funding to expand access to mental health and...
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Bridging the Gap Between Behavioral Health Policy and Network Reality
On paper, behavioral health coverage in America has never looked better. Parity laws have teeth. A national crisis line exists. New clinic models are reaching communities that waited decades for them. And yet a Senate Finance Committee investigation found that more than 80 percent of mental...
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Advocacy Through Data: Making the Case for Community Behavioral Health Under Value-Based Payment
Most behavioral health policy arguments still run on stories. A person who was in and out of the hospital for years, then found a community program, got stable, went back to work. The stories are true and they matter. But a recovery story does not hold up well in a budget hearing or a payer...
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When High-Functioning Leaders Over-Function: The Psychological Cost of Internal Pressure
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that high-functioning leaders rarely name out loud. Not the exhaustion of doing too much. The exhaustion of the constant internal management required to keep going. The background process of monitoring, adjusting, absorbing, and holding that runs beneath...
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Protecting Trust, Enabling Care: The Balance of Behavioral Health AI Policy
AI is no longer a future consideration for behavioral health providers, with a recent report highlighting that clinicians' adoption of these tools is outpacing nearly all recent health technologies. It is being used to support everything from documentation, session preparation, and scheduling to...
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Medicaid Is Reshaping ABA Care: Providers Are Caught in the Middle
Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) providers are entering a new phase of scrutiny, and the shift is happening faster than many expected. Across the country, federal audits are uncovering widespread documentation and billing issues in Medicaid-funded ABA services. At the same time, states are...
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Telehealth Prescribing Has Proven Its Value. Now Policy Needs to Catch Up
When HHS and DEA announced the fourth extension of telemedicine prescribing flexibilities on January 1, 2026, the news landed without much surprise in behavioral health circles. Clinicians had seen this before, each extension arriving just before the prior one lapsed. By now, the pattern is...
