Behavioral Health of Older Adults: Addressing Cultural Issues and Implementing Integrated Care

According to Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development, successful achievement of the developmental task for older age results in ego integrity when one is contemplating one’s accomplishments and perceives oneself as leading a successful life. However, some people are dissatisfied with...

Sleep Issues: An Opportunity for Integrated Care

Who should take the lead when issues of sleep problems come up? Is the sleep problem a physical or a behavioral health issue? If a client only has diabetes, there is no question that the lead in the integrated team needs to be the primary care provider (PCP) or endocrinologist. If a person only has...

Integrated Care Models to Improve Health Outcomes and Reduce Poverty

FEGS Health & Human Services, in partnership with the Institute for Family Health (IFH), Healthfirst, Bronx-Lebanon Hospital, McSilver Institute of New York University, Mount Sinai Hospital, and Promoting Specialized Care and Health (PSCH) has been awarded a $925,000 grant from the Robin Hood...

If Only HOPSTOP Could Map Our Route to the Triple Aim

Health care reform is driving consumer focused, outcome-oriented change in New York and across the country. In the past decade we have come to look at health care differently and our technology-based tools have grown by leaps and bounds. Game changing opportunities are surfacing in supporting...

Suicide Prevention: Creating an Agency-Wide Response

FEGS Health & Human Services, a large and diverse organization serving 100,000 individuals annually, provides a full array of behavioral services through community-based treatment, rehabilitation, care coordination programs and residential and housing services to over 25,000 people a year. We...

Bringing It All Back Home: Housing Innovations and the NYS Medicaid Redesign Teams

Much discussion has occurred during the last few years on reducing the high health care cost and improving outcomes for people with a serious mental illness. These individuals use a disproportionate amount of care, much of which may be unnecessary or avoidable, and tragically die 25 years earlier...

Helping Caregivers Understand the Challenges of End-of-Life Decision Making for Those with Mental Retardation

Birth is a beginning and death a destination. Those of us who are considered to have capacity to make decisions for ourselves are nevertheless often unprepared as we face the end-of-life. We live in a death denying culture, which frequently prevents many of us from considering our options when we...

Trauma, Stress and the Financial Crisis: Impact and Intervention

Is a financial crisis traumatic? In her writing and teaching, noted grief and loss researcher Katherine Shear, MD has defined grief as something good leaving our lives and trauma as something bad coming into our lives. The current crisis has elements of both grief and trauma, especially for those...

Improving Access to Health Care for Mental Health Consumers

Recently published studies have startled mental health professionals with the assertion that persons with serious mental illnesses in the United States can now expect to live, on average, 25 years less than everybody else. The CATIE and the State Mental Health Program Directors studies detail a...

Wellness Initiatives for People Living with Mental Illness

According to New York State’s Commissioner of Mental Health, Michael Hogan PhD, “There really is no recovery without some overall experience of wellness. There is no wellness without positive mental health. We need integration of care in every place. We have to approach it from a lot of...