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The Role of CCBHCs in Reducing Incarceration
For decades, jails and prisons have functioned as the nation's largest, and least appropriate, providers of mental health and substance use treatment. People with untreated serious mental illness (SMI) and substance use disorders (SUD) often move repeatedly through arrest, incarceration, release,...
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Preventing Forensic Involvement Through Continuous Care
When our behavioral health, housing, and social service systems are unable to adequately meet the needs of people with serious mental health challenges, those individuals too often find their way into the criminal justice system without the treatment and support they need. The path to...
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The NYSPA Report – Treatment Before Arrest: Why Diversion Begins With Engagement
When psychiatrists discuss behavioral health diversion, we usually mean redirecting a person away from arrest, jail, or prosecution and toward treatment. Mental health courts, crisis-response programs, and alternatives to incarceration are essential; yet if diversion begins only after...
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Beyond Deinstitutionalization: Unraveling the Complex Criminalization of Serious Mental Illness in America
Individuals with Serious Mental Illness (SMI) are disproportionately represented among the populations of the nation's correctional facilities. Some have dubbed jails and prisons the "New Asylums" as the criminal justice system has become the de facto service provider for individuals with severe...
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Diversion Is Prevention: How New York Is Supporting Mental Health Around the Legal System
We all deal with mental health challenges in our lives. In New York State, we are doing everything in our power to guarantee that nobody has to face these challenges alone by expanding community-based services, supporting individuals during all stages of life, and promoting sustained recovery. For...
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Beyond Either/Or: Where Assisted Outpatient Treatment Fits in Mental Health Care
Debates over Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) too often ask us to choose a side. Either we respect autonomy and rely exclusively on voluntary treatment, or we accept coercion as necessary to ensure people receive care. Neither position adequately reflects the complexity of serious mental illness...
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Justice-Impacted Older Adults: Supporting a Vulnerable Population
When we think about justice-impacted older adults, there are three facts we need to keep in mind: A post-incarceration transition is difficult under the best of circumstances. Justice-impacted older adults tend to have complex behavioral and physical health needs. Adults over age 60 are...
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How to Dismantle Self-Stigma in Schizophrenia
Hi, my name is Dr. Tracy Hicks. I am a mother, a friend, an educator, a mentor, a wife, a psychiatric healthcare provider...among many other parts of my identity. How I introduce myself is an important element of how I view myself and how the outside world views me. My experience with...
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Advocacy: The Power of the Collective Voice
Policy-making can solve systemic problems, but we can only achieve true behavioral healthcare reform with adequate financial resources. Advocating for public support for mental healthcare takes time, persistence, and a group effort. One of the most successful examples of collaboration in New...
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Building the Missing Middle: How Advocacy Helped Create a New Behavioral Health Intervention for New Yorkers With Serious Mental Illness
For decades, our behavioral health systems have faced the growing challenge of meeting the needs of people with serious mental illness (SMI). In New York, where the Institute for Community Living (ICL) operates, and most places in the country, demand for services far exceeds supply. Furthermore,...
