Over the last year I have been writing about the growing public health crisis of behavioral health challenges among adolescents and young adults, especially BIPOC and LGBTQ+ youth. The United Hospital Fund (UHF), in collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), recently released The Ripple Effects of the Adolescent Behavioral Health Crisis, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the behavioral health issues among adolescents in the United States, with a focused lens on New York State and New York City. This is a much-needed summary of the critical issues facing adolescent ..read more

The current state of value-based care (VBC) can be characterized by the challenges many organizations face as they attempt to obtain and operationalize their value-based agreements. Stakeholders are trying to work through practical solutions for organizations representing services that weren’t initially considered in the original Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) models. These types of provider organizations include healthcare at-home services and behavioral health services. Perhaps the most significant challenge for these providers is finding a reimbursement model that meets their set of s ..read more

“Chronic Pain and Its Impact on Behavioral Health” View as a Flipbook View as a PDF   Articles in This Issue Chronic Pain and Its Impact on Behavioral Health A “Prescription” for Integrated Care for Chronic Pain and Associated Conditions Aging, Pain, and Behavioral Health Challenges – Untangling the Threads Beyond the Pain: Insights From Individuals Living With Chronic Pain Chronic Pain and Its Impacts: An Overview & Possible Management Options Chronic Pain, Quality of Life, and Suicidal Behavior Coping With Chronic Pain: Good Advice Is Easy to Give but Hard to Take Disparities in ..read more

In the mid-1970s, Quality of Life (QOL) was identified as a key medical concept (Berlim and Fleck, 2003). Readily adopted in oncology, the concept spread through different fields of medicine and eventually to psychiatry. Many tools were developed to take QOL from a subjective concept to a measurable attribute. Some of these tools, such as the Quality of Life Interview and the Wisconsin Quality of Life Index, were designed specifically to measure QOL for individuals with severe and persistent mental illness. Balazs et al. (2018) noted that QOL can be a significant mediator between peer and emo ..read more

It is with pride in an unsurpassed history and great hope for the future that AHRC New York City kicks off its 75th year with a Gala on May 13th. The organization began in 1948 with a $3 ad in the New York Post placed by Ann Greenberg, a Bronx housewife whose young son with developmental disabilities had been denied access to school. She was looking for other parents to form a play group, and the response was overwhelming. Within a year, hundreds of New York City families of children with disabilities had banded together to create what would, within a decade, become a grassroots human rights m ..read more

Everyone experiences scary or difficult events in their lives. For some children, these events can be so frightening or dangerous that they can have a lasting impact on their well-being. Trauma refers to the physical, cognitive, and emotional responses to an event (or events) that is physically or emotionally overwhelming or life-threatening. Children’s responses to a traumatic event can have negative effects if left untreated. Trauma can be the result of a single incident, like the unexpected death of a loved one, a serious accident, or experiencing a natural disaster. It can also be chronic ..read more

I have been open about my bipolar disorder for almost twenty years. Immediately after I spoke at my first mental health awareness event, I was met with feedback and gratitude. People thought it was a brave thing for me to speak up about my mental illness to fight stigma. But the truth is, I felt I had to reveal my mental health problems because I was scared of being stigmatized. When I had my first manic episode, I was at college and Facebook had just come out. I was nervous that people were going to gossip about me, and I would never know who knew what about my mental health history, so I fel ..read more

Psychosomatic symptoms are the physical and physiological experiences caused by mental or emotional conflict or distress, such as anxiety. Often, they are dismissed as being imagined or exaggerated, likely because they are part of someone’s internal experience. It is important to note psychosomatic symptoms are very real for the people experiencing them and can have a major impact on their ability to function and meet the demands of daily life. These psychosomatic symptoms are one of the most effective ways for clinicians to determine one’s internal distress. As hormones, like adrenaline and c ..read more

Like all communities, stigma plays a role in an individual’s willingness to access mental health treatment and support. To combat this, Yates INSYGHT, in partnership with the Yates County Community Services Department, chose to promote a countywide initiative focused on promoting comfort in talking about mental health and wellness and seeking support and treatment to reduce stigma around this topic. With the support of OMH funds, Yates INSYGHT was able to execute various initiatives, including the placement of billboards and a county transportation bus wrap with messaging normalizing the need ..read more

Thank you so much for including me in this project. Thank you to the NYS Office of Mental Health for their support. We are thrilled to present the work we accomplished as part of the Stigma Reduction Project. My name is Melissa Clark, VP of Community Impact at United Way of the Dutchess-Orange Region (UWDOR). UWDOR has a long history of Community Impact and anti-stigma practices. We were founded in 1937 and, working with our supporters, “fight for the Health, Education and Financial Stability for every person in our community.” We provide extensive capacity building and resources to our hundr ..read more