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The NYSPA Report: The Mentally Ill Elderly in Prison: A Behavioral Health Crisis
A recent editorial in the New York Times titled: “Nursing Homes Behind Bars” notes that “after declining for three years in a row, the nation’s stubbornly huge prison population has crept back up again” and “aging inmates make up the largest and fastest-growing segment of the American...
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Behavioral Health of Older Adults: Addressing Cultural Issues and Implementing Integrated Care
According to Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development, successful achievement of the developmental task for older age results in ego integrity when one is contemplating one’s accomplishments and perceives oneself as leading a successful life. However, some people are dissatisfied with...
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Aging, Mental Illness and the Years Ahead: A Consumer’s Perspective
Having a mental illness, I try not to burden myself by thinking too much about the future. As I turn fifty-seven this fall, I do worry about how I will be able to function in the years to come. For people like myself who suffer from undue anxiety, there is no shortage of worries. We all face an...
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ElderCare Services Address “Hidden Epidemic” of Drug and Alcohol Abuse Among Older Americans
As baby boomers, many of whom experimented with drugs in the 1960s and 1970s, head towards their senior years, the number of older Americans with substance use disorders is growing dramatically and with it the need for specialized treatment. Odyssey House’s ElderCare program has focused on the...
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Elder Abuse: A Commitment to Awareness and Prevention
With an increasing life expectancy and an aging American society, the challenges of later life adulthood are becoming increasingly important. Therefore, it is essential that those who help manage and coordinate care for the elder population be attentive to both normal and problematic issues of...
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Integrating Mental and Physical Health for a Geriatric Population
As part of the growing attention and interest at all levels of government to advance geriatric mental health care, New York State enacted the Geriatric Mental Health Act in 2005. One of the law’s provisions authorized the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) to establish a geriatric...
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iCBT – Easing Integration of Behavioral and Primary Care
Meeting the challenges of integrating behavioral health into primary care settings requires out of the box thinking and clinician openness to working in new ways. While there has been growing recognition of the benefits of the Collaborative Care Model to improve both health and behavioral health...
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Friendship is Good Medicine at Compeer
There is an ever-growing body of evidence that supports the importance of friendship to quality of life. Friendship is both important and often problematic for people who experience serious mental illness (SMI). A recent study of the Compeer program found that its clients experience an increased...
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Acquiring Financial Skills for Career Advancement
As mental health professionals advance in their careers to higher positions, they will be called upon – particularly in the roles of manager, director, and executive director – to provide additional contributions in the area of financial management to ensure the organization’s continued...
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Whole Health Peer Support: Improving Health Disparity Among Individuals with Serious Mental Health Challenges and/or Addictions
Recovery Innovations is one of the largest employers of peer support providers in the world. Our peer workforce is about 600 strong and counting. Back in 2000, we began to identify significant vulnerability in the health of our workforce as well as the health of the people they were serving....
