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Community Mental Health Promotion and Support Team Helps Older Adults Thrive
CEC Health Care operates a Community Mental Health Promotion and Support (COMHPS) team that provides emotional support, wellness activities, screenings, and referrals to treatment in Western Nassau County. A multi-disciplinary team of licensed mental health professionals and paraprofessionals seeks...
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Beyond the Pain: Insights From Individuals Living With Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is a significant contributor to disability among Americans, with an estimated 51.6 million people experiencing chronic pain that lasts longer than three months. (Rikard, Strahan, Schit, & Guy, 2023). Regardless of its source – whether medical or unexplained origin – chronic...
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Working Works: Considerations and Resources for Navigating Employment in the Recovery Journey
Behavioral health best practice incorporates a whole-health perspective that emphasizes wellness, is person-centered, and focuses on the whole person and their strengths, not their illness (Swarbrick, 2006). Occupational wellness, that “personal satisfaction and enrichment derived from one’s...
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Moving Toward Recovery After Discharge with the Ongoing Abstinence Recovery Schedule Program™
Like many psychiatric hospitals, Montgomery County Emergency Service (MCES), located in Norristown, PA, serves adults with primary serious mental illness many of whom also have a co-occurring substance use disorder (COD), sometimes involving opiates. This “double trouble” puts them at greater...
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Consumer Perspectives: Substance Use Treatment and Mental Health
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 are served by Services for the UnderServed (S:US), a New York City-based nonprofit that is committed to giving every New...
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Why Personalized Recovery-Oriented Services (PROS) Works: Achieving Independence and Fulfillment
The deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill in New York State some 50 years ago had a clear goal: To create accessible and adequate housing and support programs to allow people to live independently in the community, to work toward recovery and a full and productive life outside a psychiatric...
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St. Francis Friends of the Poor’s Serious Mental Illness Programs in the Community
Picture this; you wake up on a therapeutic mattress and push aside your shades to catch a glimpse of the city’s hustle and bustle. Next, you reach into your mini fridge for a bottle of water and begin your day thereafter. You walk downstairs, locking your private room behind you, and check out...
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Co-Creating an Equitable Crisis Care Continuum to Reduce Stigma
People are in pain. We are experiencing an onslaught of public health crises that is affecting our overall functioning. The fierce urgency of now to collectively move us to a space of wellness is imperative to our quality of life. The current crisis care continuum is not designed to meet the needs...
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Innovative Programs are Transforming New York State’s Behavioral Healthcare System
As we recover from the COVID Pandemic, we must look forward to the future and the critical issues our behavioral health care system will need to address. We know that over 40% of New Yorkers will have a mental health impact from this pandemic and we are seeing over twice the number of our youth...
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How Mental Health Stigma Drives Suicide Risk
The inter-relationship between suicide risk, mental illness, and stigma against mental illness is multi-faceted and strong. Both mental illness and suicide are highly stigmatized. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) identifies mental illness as a significant risk factor for...