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Point of View – The Vulnerability of Women with Serious Mental Illness: Time for Action
Women with serious and persistent mental illnesses often have hard lives. They usually have experienced significant trauma during their childhoods. They are far more likely than those without mental illness to be homeless at one time or another, and life outdoors takes a toll on the body and the...
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Our Patients Are Mothers Too
The impact of serious mental illness on mothers has received little attention when compared to the study of outcomes for children of parents with mental illness. Mental health providers may not routinely inquire about the parenting status of seriously mentally ill women, or consider whether they...
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The Economics of Recovery: System Reform
New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s Medicaid Redesign Team gathered an impressive list of suggestions to stem the growth of New York’s 50+ billion dollar Medicaid program. I was particularly impressed with their adoption of the 80/20 concept developed by business marketers in the 70’s....
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Preventing Depression in Teenagers
In this article, we summarize research indicating that women experience depression more frequently than men, and that this difference emerges during the adolescent years. There are several reasons girls may be at higher risk for depression than boys, but researchers still do not fully understand...
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The NYSPA Report: Achieving the Promise of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act
The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA, the Parity Act) ushered in a new era for health insurance coverage for mental health and substance use (mh/sud) disorders. The foundation for this was laid by the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996, and, significantly, the Patient...
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The Mom of a Mentally Ill Child Needs Understanding
Being the mother of a child with mental illness is a grueling job. First, being female doesn’t help. Besides usually being the primary caretaker of the child, being female in our culture can mean being taken less seriously. There’s also an assumption, rarely directly expressed, that a mom...
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A Mother’s Challenge: Planning for the Transition of Decision-Making
On a recent airing of National Public Radio’s “This American Life” the narrator tells the story of Emily Feldman, a New Jersey woman in her 70’s who has been caring for her 39-year-old autistic son, Scott, all his life. Emily is getting on in years and she knows she cannot continue to care...
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Women and Depression: Discovering Hope
Everyone occasionally feels blue or sad, but these feelings are usually fleeting and pass within a couple of days. When a woman has a depressive disorder, it interferes with daily life and normal functioning, and causes pain for both the woman with the disorder and those who care about her....
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What Gets in the Way: Latinas Who Don’t Access or Stay in Treatment
As social workers in urban settings, we often hear about the traumas our female clients endure. These include experiencing or witnessing: sexual assaults, parental abuse/neglect, domestic violence, child fatalities, and life-threatening illnesses/injuries (Gaillot 2010). Women are more likely to...
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Understanding Eating Disorders: An Overview from the NIMH
An eating disorder is marked by extremes. It is present when a person experiences severe disturbances in eating behavior, such as extreme reduction of food intake or extreme overeating, or feelings of extreme distress or concern about body weight or shape. A person with an eating disorder may...
