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A Brief History of Peer Support and its “Integration” into Behavioral Healthcare: The Uneasiest of Bedfellows
The proliferation of peer services throughout the behavioral healthcare and social welfare systems has transformed them in ways their progenitors might not have anticipated. The peer support and recovery movements originated in eighteenth-century France under the auspices of Phillipe Pinel and...
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Safe at Last: Safe Options Support (SOS) Offers Options to Support the Homeless
Supporting the homeless population in NYC is a complex issue rooted in factors like the lack of affordable housing, mental illness, substance use, unemployment, and poor health conditions. Following the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, New York City (NYC) has grappled with a significant...
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Critical Questions for the Development of Housing that Supports Recovery
There is no doubt that housing supports recovery – i.e., having a satisfying life as a person with a serious mental illness depends first and foremost on having a decent place to live – but many people need help to have decent housing. Amazingly, that was not recognized in the initial phase...
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Addressing the Intersection between Severe Mental Illness and Homelessness
Services for the UnderServed (S:US) is one the largest community-based health and human services organizations in New York State that works intentionally daily to right societal imbalances by providing comprehensive and culturally responsive services. We provide services to people living with...
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45 Years Within Human Services – Reflections and Where We Go From Here
I have had the privilege of working within the field of autism over the past 45 years. For 24 of those years, I have been honored to work at Melmark, a multi-state human service provider with premier private special education schools, professional development, training, and research centers,...
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Mental Health in America: Looking Back With Pride and Ahead With Hope
In the early 1970s at the height of deinstitutionalization in New York, I worked at a psychiatric rehabilitation program on the West Side of Manhattan that primarily served people who had been in state psychiatric hospitals for 5, 10, 20, even 40 years. Each week I went to Manhattan State Hospital...
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50-Year-Old Organization Reflects on Its Achievements and Hopes for the Future
Federation of Organizations is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its incorporation as a not-for-profit by the parents of people with serious mental illness and/or developmental disabilities. Fifty years ago, these parents dreamed of changing the system. That has certainly come true! We can see...
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Deinstitutionalization Did Not Cause Homelessness: Loss of Low-income Housing and Disability Benefits Did
I recently read yet another article that blames homelessness on deinstitutionalization. Yes, a disproportionate number of homeless people have long-term mental disorders, and yes some—perhaps a third—of these people would have been in state hospitals 65 or 70 years ago when that was pretty much...
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Housing People with Serious Mental Illness in Jails and Prisons: Why Are We Still Criminalizing Mental Illness?
Lack of appropriate access to mental health care for the seriously mentally ill in the U.S. is a critical issue. Such lack of access can lead to significant, adverse living outcomes for individuals living with mental illness, including homelessness and incarceration. It is a disturbing fact that...
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Supportive Housing Development: Achievements, Challenges and Opportunities
Government-funded supportive housing in New York State has a richly textured history that entails an amalgam of competing philosophies, political trends and economic imperatives. A complete survey of this history is beyond the scope of this article, and a comprehensive assessment of the “current...
