-
Investing in the Integrated Care Workforce
It is no longer a new idea that the mind and body are intrinsically connected; Socrates via Plato, described this around 360 B.C. Yet, we still separate and silo these aspects of care; treating behavioral health needs like schizophrenia in mental health clinics and physical issues like diabetes in...
-
Peers: An Essential Component to the Behavioral Health Workforce
What makes a well-rounded behavioral health workforce who can deliver innovative, person-centered services that can affect change for the better? For Federation, the answer is Peer Specialists. Peers have become an integral part of the behavioral health workforce and Federation has been a pioneer...
-
The Center for Practice Innovations: A Resource for the Behavioral Healthcare Workforce
The New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) and the Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, established the Center for Practice Innovations at Columbia Psychiatry and New York State Psychiatric Institute (CPI) in 2007 to promote the widespread use of evidence-based practices developed...
-
The Experience of Workplace Stress and Compassion Satisfaction of Licensed Social Workers
Employed in fast-paced, often poorly funded agencies and working with clients who have experienced significant traumas, many licensed social workers are believed to experience a high degree of stress. At the same time, many feel emotionally fulfilled by their work and experience “compassion...
-
The Behavioral Health Workforce Crisis: Past, Present, and Future
First on the list of topics for this issue of Behavioral Health News was “The Workforce Crisis Today.” That’s interesting because the workforce “crisis” is anything but new. For example, when I first entered this field during the height of deinstitutionalization in New York—the early...
-
Self-Care is Essential to Well-being at Work
By now, “self-care” and “workplace wellness” aren’t novel concepts. It would be difficult not to find myriad references to both in the popular and professional press. Many organizations, including in the private sector, healthcare and government have embraced employee wellness programs,...
-
Staff Development at the Mental Health Association of Westchester
In recent editions of Behavioral Health News, we have written of sweeping transformations in services offered at The Mental Health Association of Westchester (MHA). These transformations require critical staff development - learning new skills and new processes of working. To manage these changes,...
-
Rural Workforce Development: Critical Challenges
The critical challenges that are associated with rural workforce development remain a significant issue in America. We have an obligation to explore the best ways of caring for the underserved rural population. Currently we have a health professions crisis unfolding. The federal government projects...
-
Primary Care Integration: Alternative Workforce Strategies for Community-Based Behavioral Health Service Organizations in the Era of Physician Shortages
It has been many years since the surgeon general report declared that vastly poor health outcomes for persons suffering from behavioral health disorders was a public health crisis. Lives filled with long term disability and early mortality caused, in part, by service fragmentation within the U.S....
-
Peers in the Workforce: Reversing Misconceptions and Succeeding
This article is part of a quarterly series giving voice to the perspectives of individuals with lived experiences as they share their opinions on a particular topic. The authors of this column facilitated a focus group of their peers to inform this writing. The authors are served by Services for...
