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Complexities in Caring for Older Adults: Challenges and Opportunities for Improvement
It has been widely reported that individuals with chronic behavioral health conditions experience significantly diminished life expectancies (Chesney et al., 2014). This tragic phenomenon may be attributed, at least in part, to comorbid medical conditions commonly associated with the aging process....
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Safe, Stable Housing and Employment Are Key Social Determinants of Health, and Critical for Recovery!
Safe and stable housing, together with appropriate employment, are important determinants of mental and physical health. For people who are living with mental illness, housing and employment can play a critical role in their journeys towards recovery. Governor Hochul has long recognized the...
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Moving Toward Recovery After Discharge with the Ongoing Abstinence Recovery Schedule Program™
Like many psychiatric hospitals, Montgomery County Emergency Service (MCES), located in Norristown, PA, serves adults with primary serious mental illness many of whom also have a co-occurring substance use disorder (COD), sometimes involving opiates. This “double trouble” puts them at greater...
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Quality Integrated Care is Critical for the Recovery of Individuals with Mental Health and Substance Use Challenges
Integrated care works with the whole person in the world they are experiencing including their physical and behavioral health, as well as past trauma and other social determinants impacting their lives. Individuals with co-occurring disorders, when treated holistically, develop a trusting...
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Lessons Learned in Effectively Advancing Co-Occurring Competent Care
Recently, there has been great emphasis on enhancing organizational co-occurring competency and for good reason. Climbing overdose and suicide rates, with bi-directional contribution from mental health (MH) and substance use disorders (SUD), reflect our need to do better serving those with multiple...
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The NYSPA Report: Overdose Prevention Centers Keep Our People Alive
People with opioid use disorder (OUD) have a high prevalence of a serious mental illness (SMI). Nearly 27% of people with an OUD had a co-occurring SMI (Jones and McCance-Katz 2019), which complicates care when access to dual diagnosis treatment is limited. Overdose deaths have steadily increased...
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Early Mental Health Screening and Intervention Could Halt Addiction Epidemic
The epidemic of substance use disorder (SUD) has become a plague on our society, resulting in countless deaths, overwhelming our health care and justice systems, and taking a terrible toll on the families of those suffering from this disease. While billions of dollars have been poured into...
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The Sensory Comfort Cart: A Portable Resource to Assist in the Recovery of Patients with Co-Occurring Diagnoses
This article describes a brief history of sensory modalities in mental health and substance abuse treatment, the purpose and current use of a sensory comfort cart at NewYork-Presbyterian Westchester Division (NYPWD), early patient outcomes, and implications for discharge and recovery. Brief...
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Co-Occurring Conditions in Mild Autism Spectrum Disorder: Integrated Treatment Approaches
Co-occurring mental health conditions are the rule rather than the exception in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A full 70% of individuals with ASD have one co-occurring condition and 40% have two or more (Siminoff et al, 2008). Living with autism is a journey, and in talking to families, I often...
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Why Integrated Care for Co-Occurring Disorders Is So Important
Providing integrated treatment for people with co-occurring behavioral and physical health disorders has become a central goal of mental health policy reform. Why? In part the answer is that the failure to provide effective integrated care drives up the cost of care. But the answer also is that...
