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Ongoing Transformations at The MHA of Westchester
The Mental Health Association of Westchester (MHA) continues to actively transform the delivery of our expansive array of services, increasingly moving from a conceptual commitment to provide holistic services to operationalizing a unified fabric of existing and newly created services....
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Promoting Recovery for Individuals with Unidentified Trauma and Co-Occurring Disorders
Advancement of recovery for individuals with Co-Occurring Disorders has been recognized as a significant principle for the transformation of behavioral health services. Co-Occurring Disorders is defined as a mental health disorder being experienced along with the presence of a substance use...
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Helping Long Islanders Thrive
As opioid addiction continues to rise in Suffolk County and around the country, staff at Family & Children’s Association (FCA) are working together to combat this growing epidemic. With the support of agency partners Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (LICADD), Families...
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Crisis Respite: An Effective Intervention in the Continuum of Recovery
Think about your work with a client with a psychiatric diagnosis in emotional crisis. Did your client get what they needed at an emergency room? Or, after hours of waiting, were they told they were well enough to deal with it at home, perhaps by themselves? A peer-run Crisis Respite stay is an...
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Consumer Perspectives: Supported Housing is Key to Our Recovery
This article is part of a quarterly series giving voice to the perspectives of individuals with lived experiences as they share their opinions on a particular topic. The authors of this column facilitated a focus group of their peers to inform this writing. The authors are served by Services for...
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Meeting the Needs of Vulnerable Populations
An Interview with Donna Colonna, S:US CEO and Richard Taylor, Peer Specialist, Blake Men’s Shelter J.J. SUS is an organization that takes its name seriously, and literally: Services for the UnderServed. Put more casually, SUS is dedicated to providing services for people who often get the short...
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Transforming Behavioral Health Systems of Care to Improve Outcomes and Promote Value
Many state and county Medicaid programs are considering the implementation of managed care models in their behavioral health care systems in order to ensure consistent quality outcomes for their residents with a mental health condition or substance use disorder. As a national leader in managed...
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From the Publisher’s Desk “The Handshake of Hope”
With the holiday’s only a month or so away, I recall a true story I wrote about several years ago in this publication. It began with, “Let me tell you a story about a simple handshake that saved the life of a man from New York suffering with mental illness.” The year was 1987 and he was 38...
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Youth in Transition
This article is the third in a quarterly series giving voice to the perspectives of individuals with lived experiences as they share their opinions on a particular topic. The young authors of this column came together as a focus group of peers to discuss their experiences and collaborate on this...
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It Takes a Village
When we hear the phrase “It takes a village to raise a child,” we think of the African apologue, or maybe Hillary Clinton’s book about larger societal responsibilities. But in the children’s behavioral health system, it is also true. Throughout the history of this system, there has been a...
