Total Wellness at Urban Pathways: Focusing on the Needs of Older Adults

Founded in 1975, Urban Pathways has long been a beacon of hope for those in need of supportive housing and comprehensive care. Today, under the leadership of CEO Frederick Shack, Urban Pathways serves over 3,900 people across a variety of 20+ services and programs in NYC. UP operates outreach...

The Integrated Role of Housing and Employment in Recovery

When you think of recovery, you often think of what we would consider our social determinants of health: financial stability, housing and surrounding environment, health care access, education, and social connections. When a person is doing well in all these domains, they generally thrive and...

When Happy Hour Isn’t Always So Happy: One Clinician’s Point of View

I’m sure many of us reading the words “Happy Hour” get a little excited: as a time to socialize, network, and let loose. For some, it’s a chance to be an extrovert - while an invisible cloak helps suppress insecurities, fears, and worries. For many, in fact, happy hour is not really very...

Overcoming the Stigma of Mental Illness: Peers Play a Critical Role

Sharing a lived experience may be the single most important tool we have to address the stigma of living with a mental illness, and the isolation of COVID only exacerbated how important it can be to have someone to talk with who truly understands. Over the past two years, we all learned to keep a...

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...

ICL Housing: Like a Nice Piece of CAKE

As the story goes, at ICL we’ve been saying for quite a while, that Housing is much more than just a bed, some clean sheets and case management services. At ICL we believe that Housing is far more complex and that at the very core of all of our Housing is hope and relationship building. Today,...

The Right Support

Creating an atmosphere of inclusion and acceptance for all people coming to an organization for help begins with the core values of that agency. Here, at ICL, we believe in and offer person-centered, recovery-oriented, trauma-informed, and integrated physical and behavioral healthcare. No matter a...

Maintaining a Focus on Recovery for People Within the Supported Housing System

The changes that have taken place over the last few years in the behavioral health field are affecting the way staff view “clients” as well as the way these same “clients” are being helped to view themselves. There is a swirl of information and expectations, and government funding is...