The Evolution of the 988 Lifeline: A Year After the Transition

On July 16, 2022, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline announced the transition of the former 1-800-273-TALK (8255) phone number to 988, an easy-to-remember three digit-number for 24/7 crisis care across the United States and its territories. A year after the transition, the 988 Suicide...

Disasters: The Importance of Fighting Mental Health Stigma

The last few decades have seen a steady increase in disasters around the world. Whether caused by humans or nature, for many communities disasters occur with such frequency that they overlap each other. The traditional Phases of Disaster model–anticipation, impact, adaptation, and recovery...

Co-Creating an Equitable Crisis Care Continuum to Reduce Stigma

People are in pain. We are experiencing an onslaught of public health crises that is affecting our overall functioning. The fierce urgency of now to collectively move us to a space of wellness is imperative to our quality of life. The current crisis care continuum is not designed to meet the needs...

Family Mental Health: How Your Organization Programs and Services Are Helping

For over 50 years, Vibrant Emotional Health (formerly known as The Mental Health Association of NYC) has been fulfilling its mission to help people achieve mental and emotional well-being with dignity and respect. The work of the organization has branched into comprehensive direct service programs...

The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Playing a Vital Role in Building a Crisis Care Continuum

Ease of access to crisis care and a lack of funds to sustain operations of local, backup, and specialized crisis centers have long posed tremendous challenges to our behavioral health system. But on July 16, 2022, the nation went some way towards addressing that with the transition to the new, easy...

How We as Practitioners Can Foster Stigma

Practitioners, despite our best intentions, may unconsciously foster stigma by downplaying or not recognizing the ways in which power dynamics, implicit bias, stereotypes, and lack of cultural humility can all build barriers to care. To illustrate the stigmatizing potential of a...

Internalized Stigma

Stigma around mental health is not an unfamiliar conversation in professional circles and, thanks to the hard work of countless teams and individuals, stigma is becoming a more common conversation in our communities, albeit a recent conversation. Prior to this work, stigma didn’t have a context...

Behavioral Health Volunteering in Times of Crisis

When a call for support goes out at the onset of a disaster, we commonly recognize the basic needs: shelter, food, water, clothing. Behavioral health needs – mental, emotional, and spiritual care – have been an afterthought, if included in the response plan at all. This is beginning to shift....

When Staff Burnout Prevents Progress

After nearly two years of facing COVID-19 waves and realities, healthcare workers are facing unprecedented levels of burnout. Providing important support, resources and space for staff can help prevent this and other acute stress responses from turning into longer term behavioral health...

Secondary Traumatic Stress: A Key Piece of the Conversation

The personal impact of being in the helping profession never crossed my mind when I was in graduate school on my way to becoming a social worker. My focus was on gleaning what I could from my professors and building what I hoped would be the most complete set of clinical skills. I was unaware at...