InvisALERT Solutions – ObservSMART

Archive for the ‘Spring 2022 Issue’ Category

NYS Office of Mental Health Announces Funding to Strengthen Suicide Prevention Efforts for Veterans and Uniformed Personnel

The New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) recently announced funding for a new initiative to strengthen resiliency and suicide prevention efforts among military Veterans and uniformed personnel, including law enforcement officers, firefighters, emergency medical service members, and...

Today’s Treatment Models Use All the Tools in the Toolbox

Treatment for substance misuse begins before someone walks through the doors of a rehabilitation center asking for help. It starts when a person acknowledges their life is out of control - or controlled by a drug of abuse - and harms themselves and potentially others. Denial, conscious and...

Pediatric Behavioral Health Urgent Care: An Innovative Model of Care for Children and Adolescents

The Cohen Children’s Pediatric Behavioral Health Urgent Care Center (“BH Urgi”), located on Long Island, NY, is an alternative treatment setting for school-aged children and adolescents ages 5 through 17 in need of urgent mental health support. BH Urgi is intended to provide urgent or...

Recovery, Hope and Resilience During the Pandemic

As one of the largest providers of outpatient mental health services in New York State, New York Psychotherapy and Counseling (NYPCC) works together with tens of thousands of New Yorkers facing mental health challenges. NYPCC embraces a recovery-oriented, trauma-informed model of community mental...

To End the Drug Crisis, Bring Addiction Out of the Shadows

When I was six years old, as I was having dinner with my mother and three sisters, my mother received a telegram. She broke down crying as she read it. Her father - my grandfather - had died. In her grief, she locked herself in her room and would not let me console her. The memory of my inability...

NIH Research Matters – Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder in Jail Reduces Risk of Return

Almost two-thirds of people currently incarcerated in the U.S. have a substance use disorder. Many struggle with opioid addiction. Opioids include prescription pain relievers, heroin, and powerful synthetic versions such as fentanyl that are driving record numbers of overdose deaths. Medications...

Offering Buprenorphine Medication to People with Opioid Use Disorder in Jail May Reduce Rearrest and Reconviction

A study conducted in two rural Massachusetts jails found that people with opioid use disorder who were incarcerated and received a medication approved to treat opioid use disorder, known as buprenorphine, were less likely to face rearrest and reconviction after release than those who did not...

Connection as Treatment: The Healing Power of the Community Center

Humans are social beings by nature. While our level of socialization differs from person to person, the great majority of people have emotional and psychological needs that are best met by interpersonal engagement. In a healthcare system defined and often enhanced by outcome measures,...

Navigating the Road to Recovery: An Art and a Science

Defining recovery is all-encompassing. It may be recovery from mental illness, substance use, trauma, losses and, as we’ve recently learned, from the effects of a pandemic. Most often it is thought about as a journey toward regaining something that was lost or returning to a former state. In...

Recovery and Inclusion: A Viewpoint in Retrospect

Currently we are faced with a delicate dance, between saving lives and promoting and perpetuating a zombie underclass. Tens of thousands are dying from drug overdose each year. Those who are living in addiction inflict on the society, higher healthcare costs, crime rates and human services costs....