-
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...
-
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...
-
Obtaining Judicial Authorization to Medicate a Minor
A decision to give a child powerful psychotropic medication is a difficult one, fraught with uncertainty and is often viewed as the lesser of two evils. While the administration of medication to a child is itself a complicated decision the stakes are raised if either the child or the parents do not...
-
Mental Illness Education Does Make a Difference: “Breaking the Silence” Found to be Effective
Students would ask, “What’s wrong with Doug, Mrs. Susin?” Those are the words heard by Janet Susin, then a teacher in the same school where her son was a student, from his high school friends twenty-three years ago when they were searching for an explanation of why he had suddenly disappeared...
-
Mental Health Services for Children and Adolescents
Research shows that half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14.1 Scientists are discovering that changes in the body leading to mental illness may start much earlier, before any symptoms appear. Through greater understanding of when and how fast specific areas of children’s...
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
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...
-
Maternal Depression and Children’s Behavior in School
Care to venture a guess as to what grade level of student has the highest rate of expulsion from school because of problematic behavior? Let’s see how you did. According to a research study at Yale University, led by Dr. Walter Gilliam, the rate of expulsion in pre-kindergarten programs...
