Archive for the ‘Summer 2019 Issue’ Category

The Center for Practice Innovations: A Resource for the Behavioral Healthcare Workforce

The New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) and the Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, established the Center for Practice Innovations at Columbia Psychiatry and New York State Psychiatric Institute (CPI) in 2007 to promote the widespread use of evidence-based practices developed...

Adding Recovery Professionals to the Continuum of Care

What is the purpose of our work, of all the prevention, intervention and therapy, all that merciful medical model and multi-volume DSM? The treatment plans? Aftercare? All this helping apparatus – what’s it for? Now, the agreed response is that “recovery” is our mutual goal irrespective...

Addressing the Human Services Workforce Crisis Through Training and Professional Development

In 2017, the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities provided a report (retrieved from https://www.nadsp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/PCPID-2017_-Americas-Direct-Support-Workforce-Crisis-low-res.pdf) to the President of the United States regarding the workforce crisis...

Investing in the Integrated Care Workforce

It is no longer a new idea that the mind and body are intrinsically connected; Socrates via Plato, described this around 360 B.C. Yet, we still separate and silo these aspects of care; treating behavioral health needs like schizophrenia in mental health clinics and physical issues like diabetes in...

Integrating the Social and Cultural Determinants of Health into Peer Advocates Training

The phrase social and cultural determinants of health has entered the lexicon of medical and social service providers and is often mentioned alongside health disparities. Since the early 90s, public health researchers have been suggesting that a person’s socioeconomic characteristics, including...

Self-Care is Essential to Well-being at Work

By now, “self-care” and “workplace wellness” aren’t novel concepts. It would be difficult not to find myriad references to both in the popular and professional press. Many organizations, including in the private sector, healthcare and government have embraced employee wellness programs,...

An Effective Work Force Embraces and Drives Integrated Care

The behavioral health sector has been in the throes of a generational change over the past decade, one that has challenged the very way we offer treatment, organize operations and receive funding for our services. Our agencies have worked hard to adapt to these changes while maintaining the...

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...