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Finding the Perfect Fit with Peer Support: Navigating Employment with Mental Illness
Searching for the right job, or even any job, can be stressful for weeks, months, or even years. The challenges may not even stop after obtaining gainful employment. They can bleed into maintaining that job, which then shields us from engaging in the stressful job search process. These challenges...
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Consumer Perspectives: The Synergy of Housing and Employment Services in Mental Healthcare
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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Lived Experience as a Professional Pathway
The philosophy of The Mental Health Association of Westchester’s (MHA) housing and employment services and peer support is rooted in the principles of person-centered practice and the belief that individuals with behavioral health conditions – even those with histories of instability or little...
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Safe at Last: Safe Options Support (SOS) Offers Options to Support the Homeless
Supporting the homeless population in NYC is a complex issue rooted in factors like the lack of affordable housing, mental illness, substance use, unemployment, and poor health conditions. Following the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, New York City (NYC) has grappled with a significant...
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Expanding Affordable Housing and Jobs Programs as Strategies for Addressing the Mental Health and Overdose Crises
Our society is grappling with mental health and overdose crises. In the United States in 2021, 22.8% of adults experienced mental illness,1 and more than 106,000 Americans died from drug-involved overdose.2 As the leader of a New York City nonprofit provider of shelter, housing, health, and...
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Creating a Social Justice Action Framework for a NYC Social Service Provider
As one of the largest providers of community-based human services and housing in the state, the Services for the Underserved (S:US) team of over 1,800 dedicated staff serve over 38,000 New Yorkers each year. For more than four decades, S:US has served individuals and communities who face many...
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Breaking Down Barriers to Using Social Determinants of Health Data
This is the time to use technology to overcome the barriers in integrating social determinants of health (SdoH) information into healthcare but ensuring that infrastructure and standardization is in place will be a joint effort. If one were to think about individual health, you might think...
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A Social Determinants Perspective of the Intersection of Ageism, Racism and Social Isolation During COVID-19
There is now well-established evidence on how long-standing systemic health and social inequities compound one’s risk of acquiring COVID-19. However, further research is needed to explore how disadvantaged social status(es) may interact with mandated or recommended social policies that aim to...
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How Social Determinants Affect Young Adults with Autism and Learning Differences: Creating a Plan for Future Success
Social determinants of behavioral health (SDBH) can have a significant impact on young adults on the autism spectrum, especially as they enter adolescence and young adulthood. Research indicates that most graduates with autism and other learning differences will have a difficult time following high...
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Social Determinants and Adolescents’ Mental Health: First, Focus on Education and Graduation
Over recent decades, late adolescence and young adulthood, generally the years 16 or 18 through 25, have emerged as a distinct developmental period in the human life span. In the mental health field, the term Transition Age Youth and Young Adults – TAYYA – has come to describe young people of...
