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Preparing for Managed Care: Staff Credentialing, Evidence-Based Practices, and Fiscal Systems
For decades, behavioral health (BH) professionals have fought for the right to have mental health (MH) and substance use disorders (SUD) regulated in a similar manner as medical/surgical conditions. First the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 and more recently the 2012...
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Enhancing Behavioral Care Services Via Managed Care
The President’s Freedom Commission on Mental Health, under President George Bush and lead by former New York State Office of Mental Health Commissioner Michael Hogan, has stated “the mental health system is broken.” Great strides have been made in the decade since the Commission’s report in...
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Coordinated Behavioral Health Services, Inc. (CBHS) – One Group’s Pathway Toward Preparing for Managed Care
Coordinated Behavioral Health Services (CBHS), incorporated in 2012, is comprised of eight leading behavioral health and developmental disability nonprofit community-based agencies serving the Lower/Mid-Hudson River Region of New York State, and providing services in Westchester, Putnam, Rockland,...
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Collaborative Care: An Integral Part of Psychiatry’s Future
In 1974 the music critic Jonathan Landau penned a classic article in which he stated, “I have seen the future of rock and roll, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” Landau was commenting on his impression of the debut album of the then-fledgling rock star. If you will permit my imaginative...
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Integrating Mental Health and Substance Abuse Treatment
Integrated treatment produces better outcomes for individuals with co-occurring mental and substance use disorders. Without integrated treatment, one or both disorders may not be addressed properly. Mental health and substance abuse authorities across the country are taking steps to integrate...
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It’s About Time
Back in the height of what was called the “Humane Care” period, state hospital institutions took care, to the limits of their abilities, of the full spectrum of people’s needs. While one can certainly look back and question the quality of the care and the enormous personal consequences of...
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From Isolation and Despair to Engagement and Activation: The Peer Support Specialist’s Role in the Behavioral Health Care System
Peer coaches are individuals in recovery from a behavioral health condition who are trained to use their lived experience to help others on their journey to recovery. They do this by offering support, promoting engagement and facilitating activation. Optum’s Whole Health Peer coaching program is...
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Focus on Integrated Treatment (FIT)
Person-centered recovery and treatment includes understanding a person’s individual strengths and challenges. For many, the path to recovery includes addressing both mental health and substance use disorders; however, historically, treatment settings offering help with both have been difficult to...
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Behavioral Health Transformation: ASAP Provides Vision and Leadership
The New York Association of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Providers, Inc. (ASAP) is committed to influencing public policy so that substance use disorders and problem gambling prevention, treatment, and recovery services providers and the people they serve have the best opportunity to succeed....
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“Behavioral” Health: What a Difference a Word Makes!
Mental Health News is now Behavioral Health News. It will now be reaching out to the fields of alcohol and substance abuse services and planning to expand its subject matter to include information about these fields in addition to the field of mental health. This is an exciting development that, I...
