Helping Families Cope with Serious Mental Illness: Maternal vs Social Work Instincts

• By: Ruth Colón-Wagner, LMSW VCS Inc.
• July 19th, 2023
• healing, hope, parenting, recovery, resiliency, serious mental illness, Summer 2023 Issue, trauma
• 698    0

I am a Social Worker. I am also a mom of an adult child with SMI, specifically bi-polar disorder. My child is 23 and I pray that she welcomes God into her life. That’s the mom in me talking. As a social worker, I want her to get a job, find a great partner who will love her, and become as...

Organizational Strategies for Anti-Stigma Work Within Our Four Walls

• By: Ruth Colón-Wagner, LMSW VCS Inc.
• April 18th, 2023
• anti-stigma, bias, healing, hope, lived experience, mental health stigma, recovery, Spring 2023 Issue, stigma, stigma reduction, transparency
• 1462    0

Mental health stigma affects all of us. It is so ingrained in our society, that we have to consciously choose to share or not to share our experiences or connections to mental health challenges. This conscious level decision-making brings a processing we engage in asking ourselves either, “Am I...

More Than Just a Change in Title: New Statewide Effort Supports the Move from Case Management to Care Management

• By: Ruth Colón-Wagner, LMSW New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services (NYAPRS)
• April 1st, 2016
• 612    0

How does one move from working as a Case Manager to a successful Care Manager?  The change in title is simply the exchange of one letter, the ‘s’ for an ‘r’.  However, the change from one role to the other is not so simple. It’s been almost five years since New York State instituted...