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NYSPA Report: How Will New York State’s Transition to Medicaid Managed Care Impact Those with Serious Mental Illness?
Skepticism, not cynicism, will be in order during the coming year as New York State’s efforts to place all of its Medicaid enrollees, including those with serious and persistent mental illness, into Medicaid Managed Care Plans (MMCPs) is realized. Reaching this goal is an important part of the...
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Finding the Right Tools for the Job
As a provider of mental health services, offering a person-centered approach to recovery calls clinicians to not only be flexible, but also objective in order to systematically address the needs unique to each individual. Recovery is not always smooth and positive. When a consumer is marked as...
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Building a Wellness Culture for Staff to Promote a Recovery Culture for Consumers
The Mental Health Center of Denver has worked for many years to create a Recovery Culture which supports the people we serve to live a full life in spite of a mental illness. (Seven Key Strategies that Work Together to Create Recovery Based Transformation, Community Mental Health Journal, Volume...
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Practice Principles for Group Work with Children and Adolescents in the Aftermath of Disasters and Other Traumatic Events
Following are four interrelated and overlapping practice for group work with young people impacted by disasters and other traumatic events; to help them to build coping skills and overcome isolation. These principles can be (should be) incorporated into any evidence-based practice that utilizes...
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Integrative Treatment for Co-Occurring Disorders in Service Members, Veterans, and Military Families in a Civilian Inpatient Setting
Since September 11th, 2001, over two million United States service members have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Multiple factors related to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Global War on Terror (e.g., multiple deployments, length of deployments, intensity and nature of combat...
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FAST-PS: A New Initiative for Developing Novel Treatments for Psychosis and Other Mental Disorders
The National Institute of Mental Health will fund research at Columbia University Department of Psychiatry and New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) to speed the development of effective psychotropic agents and improve treatment for those suffering from mental illnesses There is a serious...
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Healing PTSD Through Relationship and Touch
When six-year-old Mandi* came to us, she had suffered significant trauma in her early years from a drug-addicted mother, a father in prison, and several disrupted foster placements. She reacted to any limit setting with uncontrollable tantrums, terrorizing and discouraging her latest well-meaning...
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Addressing Gun Violence to Combat PTSD in Children
Children exposed to violence, especially gun violence, are at great risk of developing symptoms associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In fact, nearly 100% of children who have witnessed the violent death of someone they know, especially a family member, develop these debilitating...
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Looking Beyond PTSD: Are We Ready for Our Returning Heroes?
With an estimated 30,000 troops expected home from Afghanistan next month, the question that must be asked is: “Is the United States ready to accept these veterans back into society? Is it ready to help them reacclimate, re-socialize, and reintegrate?” The answer is not a simple yes or no. To...
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Let’s Not Forget Older Veterans
Wilbur Cohen’s account of his post-war suffering in Arthur Kleinman’s wonderful book, What Really Matters1 begins with the following: “The war. It’s what happened to me in the war. I could never get over it. But I learned to live with it. Then all of a sudden on my sixtieth birthday it...
