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Point of View: Mental Health Needs in Kinship
There are 350-400,000 children and adolescents in New York State that are in kinship care. I.e., they are raised by relatives other than their biological parents. Although there is some evidence that these children do better psychologically than those who are in foster care with strangers, there...
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Regarding Divorced People with Mental Illness and the Expression “Being on the Dole” – Two Issues that Warrant Our Attention
This issue of Mental Health News examines the topic “Mental Health Services for Children and Adolescents.” As children are our future, there can be no more important area of vital concern than providing for their mental health. Our topic could fill volumes, yet in the short span of this issue...
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Residential Treatment Services as a Vital Part of the Continuum of Care for Children, Adolescents and Young Adults – An Interview with Harvey Newman, CEO of Wellspring Residential Treatment Facility
Wellspring is a residential treatment facility located in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Mental Health News recently met with Wellspring CEO Harvey Newman, MSW to discuss residential care and its benefit to the patients that it serves. In the interview that follows, we learn from Mr. Newman how...
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Risk Assessment and Its Importance for Children and Adolescents
More than four years ago, the Institute for Community Living (ICL) extended its focus on risk assessment and intervention to provide staff with additional tools and strategies to support integrated and coordinated assessment and intervention of and for clinical risk. The purpose of the model is to...
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The Economics of Recovery: When Worlds Collide
To quote Rahm Emanuel, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste - it’s an opportunity.” In the past decade, it’s been one crisis after another: 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan, Katrina and tsunamis’, Wall Street meltdown, global warming, the gulf oil spill, Haiti, bankrupt governments, even...
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The NYSPA Report – DSM-5: The Future Face of Psychiatry
Most people who walk into a psychiatrist’s office have never heard of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and yet it is one of the most important and widely used texts in all of medicine. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than 50 million...
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The Road to Independence: Addressing the Needs of Adolescents and Young Adults with a Serious Mental Illness
Diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder, Tom has spent most of his teen years in and out of psychiatric hospitals. He was living with his mother, who was unable to provide the support and guidance he needed, and at age 17 was about to age out of the children’s mental health system. Yet he did...
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The Role of the Home Care Mental Health Nurse in Identifying, Accessing, and Treating Children and Adolescents Requiring Mental Health Services
As Assistant Secretary for Health and Surgeon General of the US, Dr. David Satcher (2001) stated, “The burden of suffering experienced by children with mental health needs and their families has created a health crisis in this country…children are suffering needlessly because their emotional,...
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Through a Glass Darkly: Poverty and Mental Health in The Bronx
Each day I take a journey to the northern tip of our city, to the Northeast Bronx, where I am the director of an outpatient mental health clinic. I am a visitor from another country, Manhattan, and I inhabit this world and see it through the eyes of a white, middle-class outsider. As the 5 train...
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A Clinic’s Initial Experiences Conducting Multiple Family Groups
Jose is an 11-year-old boy who has, for years, been threatening his family to run away and never return when he is upset with them. His family has tried to cope with these behaviors the best they could, but things reached the point that they felt they needed further assistance. His grandmother made...
