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Westchester’s Behavioral Health Diversion Continuum: A Roadmap Through the Justice System
The intersection of the criminal justice and behavioral health systems is neither a point nor a straight line. Rather, the overlap of these systems is a continuum; one in which the inflection points of systemic cross-contact can be identified and potentially addressed. The clearest tool for...
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Community Integration, Economic Security, and the Promise of Olmstead
True economic security for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities is shaped by whether individuals have meaningful opportunities to work, earn income, build relationships, make choices, and participate fully in their communities. Financial planning and economic security for...
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When Decline Looks Like Competence: Recognizing Distress in High-Functioning Clients
The clients our field is least equipped to detect are not the ones whose lives are visibly coming apart. They are the ones whose lives are not. A director who has never missed a deadline, a physician whose charts are immaculate, an attorney whose win rate has not moved in a decade. By the time any...
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How Behavioral Health Practices Can Finance Growth and Expand Access to Care
Behavioral health providers face a difficult balancing act: demand for services continues to grow, while practices must manage workforce shortages, reimbursement pressures, administrative costs, technology needs, and the expense of expanding care capacity. For many organizations, the challenge is...
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Beyond Translation: Why Behavioral Health Systems Need Bicultural Leadership and a Culturally Humble Workforce
Hispanic Heritage Month allows us to honor and celebrate Latino and Hispanic histories and cultures. But it should also challenge behavioral health organizations to ask a harder question: Have we evolved beyond merely translating words to truly understanding people? Language access is vital....
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The Kitchen Problem No One Talks About in Behavioral Health: How Residential Treatment Programs Are Rethinking Food Service and What It Means for the People in Their Care
Someone enters residential treatment. They have made one of the hardest decisions of their life. They give up their phone, their schedule, their routine. For the next 28 to 90 days, almost every aspect of their day is structured for them. When they wake up. When they go to therapy. When they...
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Strengthening New York’s I/DD System Through Collaboration, Innovation, and Alignment
At a moment when New York's intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) system faces significant challenges, one network chose not to wait for change but to lead it. On March 31, 2026, the New York Integrated Network (NYIN) convened its 13 provider agencies, advocacy partners, and...
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Behavioral Health News Spotlight on Excellence: An Interview With Dr. Jorge Petit, Executive Deputy Commissioner and Director of Community Services, Division of Mental Hygiene, NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Overview In this interview, Dr. Jorge Petit, Executive Deputy Commissioner and Director of Community Services for the Division of Mental Hygiene at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, discusses what has changed and what remains constant in New York City's behavioral health...
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From Advocacy to Systems Transformation: Dr. Isaac Mawuko Adusu’s Contributions to Disability Policy Reform and the Advancement of Equitable Services
Advocacy in disability and behavioral health services often begins with a simple goal: improving quality of life for individuals and families. Yet meaningful and lasting policy change rarely emerges from isolated efforts. Systems transformation requires strategic leadership, coalition alignment,...
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Protecting Trust, Enabling Care: The Balance of Behavioral Health AI Policy
AI is no longer a future consideration for behavioral health providers, with a recent report highlighting that clinicians' adoption of these tools is outpacing nearly all recent health technologies. It is being used to support everything from documentation, session preparation, and scheduling to...
