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Helping Families Cope with Serious Mental Illness: Maternal vs Social Work Instincts
I am a Social Worker. I am also a mom of an adult child with SMI, specifically bi-polar disorder. My child is 23 and I pray that she welcomes God into her life. That’s the mom in me talking. As a social worker, I want her to get a job, find a great partner who will love her, and become as...
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Consumer Perspectives: Overcoming Mental Health Challenges
This article is part of a quarterly series giving voice to the perspectives of individuals with lived experiences as they share their opinions on a particular topic. The authors are served by Services for the UnderServed (S:US), a New York City-based nonprofit that is committed to giving every New...
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Shame and Hunger: Breaking the Stigma Through Lived Experiences
In the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that 33.8 million Americans are food insecure. These individuals do not have access to enough food to meet the needs of their household; thus, they must employ various coping strategies to stretch the food they can acquire. Yet,...
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Personalized Recovery Oriented Services (PROS) Clients Share Their Lived Experiences of Stigma
During the month of May, we at the St. Vincent’s Personalized Recovery Oriented Services (PROS) program participated in the observance of Mental Health Month. The topic “Mental Health Stigma” was so timely in the face of current events taking place in our society. This particular...
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Peers in the Workforce: Reversing Misconceptions and Succeeding
This article is part of a quarterly series giving voice to the perspectives of individuals with lived experiences as they share their opinions on a particular topic. The authors of this column facilitated a focus group of their peers to inform this writing. The authors are served by Services for...
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Treatment Works! The Recipe to Recovery and Storytelling as Medicine
When I was training to be a child psychiatrist many years ago, I had a mentor who was one of the most well-known and beloved child psychiatrists in Illinois: Jay Hirsch, MD. Jay had many sayings, quotes, and “clinical pearls” he taught all of us and I continue to use today. One of my favorites...
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A System in Transformation
This article is part of a quarterly series giving voice to the perspectives of individuals with lived experiences as they share their opinions on a particular topic. The authors of this column facilitated a focus group of their peers to inform this writing. The authors are served by Services for...
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Consumer Perspectives: The Right Research
This article is part of a quarterly series giving voice to the perspectives of individuals with lived experiences as they share their opinions on a particular topic. The authors of this column facilitated a focus group of their peers to inform this writing. The authors are served by Services for...
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“I’m Not Strong – I’m Steel” Life and Recovery with Co-Occurring Disorders
You may have heard it before: acceptance is the first step in recovery. Nothing could be truer, as was made abundantly clear as each of us shared our histories together in a discussion about Behavioral Health News “Understanding and Treating Co-Occurring Disorders” issue. Trauma leading to...
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Consumer Perspectives on Change: for Better or for Worse
We were asked to consider whether changes in the way we receive and respond to behavioral health services has been for better or for worse, now that Medicaid Managed Care is the order of the day. It was a tough conversation because at the beginning, some of us really felt like we hadn’t even...
