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Treating Youth with Sexual Aggression: Stopping Predators? Or Meeting Needs?
For the last three decades, the Juvenile Starting Over (JSO) program at Westchester Jewish Community Services (WJCS) has been treating Youth with Sexual Aggression (YwSA). It is the only community-based program in the area specially designed to help these young people cease their problematic sexual...
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Total Wellness: The Key to Behavioral Health
The term “behavioral health” is often used to describe the connection between behavior and the health and well-being of the body, mind, and spirit. Substance use disorders, mental illness, homelessness – these are all behavioral health problems that need a multi-faceted treatment approach....
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The Tradition of Excellence Continues at Wurzweiler School of Social Work
Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University is a nationally and internationally recognized School of Social Work. Located in Washington Heights and in Midtown Manhattan, the School is accessible to all five boroughs as well as Long Island, New Jersey, Westchester and even Connecticut....
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The Three A’s of a Successful Agency
In a time of diminishing resources and ever-changing regulations, today’s providers are entering a new era of care characterized by increased oversight activity and a shift in service delivery from volume-based to value-based, among other changes. Success in the new environment will require more...
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The Recovery Movement in New York State
What an exciting time to work in behavioral health! Practitioners are in a new frontier of best practices based upon significant research that provides a growing understanding about brain disease and appropriate interventions in behavioral health and recovery. The growing strength and influence of...
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Healthcare Reform: The New School Lunchroom
What does the new healthcare environment have in common with a high school lunchroom? Many Behavioral Healthcare providers have been experiencing anxiety as they hear and read about all the fundamental ways their work, organizations, and very lives are about to transform. “It’s all going to...
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The Importance of Self-Care and Staff Care for Mental Health Professionals
Dr. Francis Peabody one wrote: “The secret of the care of the patient is caring for the patient.” We must practice self-care in order to prevent becoming “Wounded Warriors.” Adversity is one of the primary reasons people seek help, and it is the mission of the mental health professional...
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The Future of Behavioral Healthcare in New York State
The future of behavioral healthcare in NYS is promising and full of great opportunity. While we understand that the future of all Medicaid care being managed creates some anxiety for providers, Governor Cuomo’s Medicaid Redesign Team (MRT) recommendations ensured that the NYS behavioral health...
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Texting to Save Lives
At a family dinner, my granddaughter Sarah, a high school sophomore in Fairfield, CT, and I were talking about the tragedy in Sandy Hook. She asked me, “Why?” I talked about the need for school programs for early detection and prevention, but I had no real answers or solutions. Later, I...
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Suicide Prevention: Creating an Agency-Wide Response
FEGS Health & Human Services, a large and diverse organization serving 100,000 individuals annually, provides a full array of behavioral services through community-based treatment, rehabilitation, care coordination programs and residential and housing services to over 25,000 people a year. We...
