-
Assisting Individuals with Employment at WJCS Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics
Westchester Jewish Community Services (WJCS) operates four Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHC), with funding provided by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in Westchester County, NY. When individuals first enter our clinic, they are greeted by a...
-
Lessons Learned in Effectively Advancing Co-Occurring Competent Care
Recently, there has been great emphasis on enhancing organizational co-occurring competency and for good reason. Climbing overdose and suicide rates, with bi-directional contribution from mental health (MH) and substance use disorders (SUD), reflect our need to do better serving those with multiple...
-
Suicide Risk and Safety Planning
Behavioral health workers are understandably distressed by the recent rise in the rates of suicide, suicide attempts, and reported suicidal ideation, including increases among teens and young adults, minorities, and those affected by the Covid-19 pandemic (Molock et al, 2023; Pathirathna et al,...
-
Addressing Clinician Burnout in a Community Mental Health Setting During the COVID Pandemic
More than two years into the COVID pandemic, we are probably all familiar with the term “burnout.” According to the literature, burnout is defined as a syndrome resulting from one’s profession that is comprised of three dimensions of symptoms: fatigue and emotional exhaustion, a low sense of...
-
A Cruel Irony: Less Mental Health Stigma but Fewer Behavioral Health Clinicians
Mental health outreach is more prevalent than it has ever been before. Efforts to encourage people to ask for help are seen online, on television, on college campuses, and in corporate headquarters. Many are sponsored by governments, but businesses, educational institutions, and foundations have...
-
OnTrackNY: An Early Intervention Program to Interrupt Psychosis
A year ago, 21-year-old Christine* started hearing voices saying terrible things about her. She wondered “why doesn’t anyone around me admit to hearing them?” And now people have started to spy on her, through her phone. Her parents were upset that she wasn’t able to contribute to the...
-
Adapting the Compeer Volunteer Program During COVID-19
It was mid-March 2020, and I, like so many others, will never forget how concerned I felt as I prepared to leave my office indefinitely to work from home due to the threat of COVID-19-19. It was a time when all of us were worried about our health and our futures, regardless of our circumstances....
-
Telehealth, Burnout, and the New Normal
No amount of education, training, or clinical experience could have prepared us, as therapists, for the reality of collective trauma on a global scale. As clinicians at the largest provider of community-based outpatient mental health services for our county, Westchester Jewish Community Services...
-
A Virtual Peer DBT Consultation Group
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), an evidence-based treatment developed for individuals meeting criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder, is one of the primary interventions delivered at Westchester Jewish Community Services (WJCS). In an effort to supplement existing training and practice in...
-
Learning from Client Surveys About Telehealth and the Impact of COVID-19
In the fall of 2019, as part of our effort to increase client accessibility to treatment, Westchester Jewish Community Services (WJCS) was preparing to launch a telehealth program. The plan had been to start a small pilot in the spring of 2020, with a few staff providing telehealth sessions, as...
