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The Triumph of “Recovery”
By the early 1970s, just a few years after aggressive deinstitutionalization began, it became clear that merely keeping people with serious and persistent mental illness out of the hospital and in the community was not enough. It was not even enough to make sure that they got good psychiatric...
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Volunteers: A Critical Support for Families Involved in the Child Welfare System
Volunteers at The Mental Health Association of Westchester play a critical role in improving the lives of children and families served by the child welfare system. Through two unique programs that rely on trained, supervised community volunteers, we advocate for the well-being of youth in family...
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Honoring David Woodlock’s Service to the Mental Health Community
David Woodlock, President and CEO of the Institute for Community Living (ICL), recently announced his retirement after a career in the mental health field spanning nearly five decades. Woodlock, who served as Deputy Commissioner for Children and Families at the New York State Office of Mental...
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Mental Health Advocacy With and Without Advanced Technology
I just switched from E-mail to Microsoft Word to write this article about mental health and technology. I left 250 E-mails unanswered to make the move. Oy vey! I feel like I’m guilty of E-mail neglect. Who will I offend today by not responding to them? It wasn’t always like this. 45...
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Social Determinants of Behavioral Health: Time to Augment Advocacy Strategy?
The hope implicit in the concept of social determinants is that broad changes in the social, economic, and political structures of our communities, nations, and world can result in improved behavioral health of large populations, such as regions, age-groups, social classes, genders, disabilities,...
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From the Publisher: A Personal Journey From a Survivor of Suicide: “From the Depths of Despair to a Mission of Advocacy”
I was drifting in and out of consciousness in the emergency room. “You have to drink this,” someone was saying as they held a tall plastic cup to my lips, filled with a tasteless ink-black liquid. I later learned that the charcoal drink was given to me to absorb the toxic soup that was in my...
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Behavioral Health During and After the Pandemic
The response of the behavioral health system to the COVID pandemic has been rapid and remarkable. But it is, of course, imperfect and incomplete. What are the challenges still to be met? And what will happen after the pandemic, hopefully, ends and we move on to a new normal? What Has Been Done...
