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Safe at Last: Safe Options Support (SOS) Offers Options to Support the Homeless
Supporting the homeless population in NYC is a complex issue rooted in factors like the lack of affordable housing, mental illness, substance use, unemployment, and poor health conditions. Following the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, New York City (NYC) has grappled with a significant...
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Critical Questions for the Development of Housing that Supports Recovery
There is no doubt that housing supports recovery – i.e., having a satisfying life as a person with a serious mental illness depends first and foremost on having a decent place to live – but many people need help to have decent housing. Amazingly, that was not recognized in the initial phase...
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Addressing the Intersection between Severe Mental Illness and Homelessness
Services for the UnderServed (S:US) is one the largest community-based health and human services organizations in New York State that works intentionally daily to right societal imbalances by providing comprehensive and culturally responsive services. We provide services to people living with...
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45 Years Within Human Services – Reflections and Where We Go From Here
I have had the privilege of working within the field of autism over the past 45 years. For 24 of those years, I have been honored to work at Melmark, a multi-state human service provider with premier private special education schools, professional development, training, and research centers,...
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Mental Health in America: Looking Back With Pride and Ahead With Hope
In the early 1970s at the height of deinstitutionalization in New York, I worked at a psychiatric rehabilitation program on the West Side of Manhattan that primarily served people who had been in state psychiatric hospitals for 5, 10, 20, even 40 years. Each week I went to Manhattan State Hospital...
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50-Year-Old Organization Reflects on Its Achievements and Hopes for the Future
Federation of Organizations is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its incorporation as a not-for-profit by the parents of people with serious mental illness and/or developmental disabilities. Fifty years ago, these parents dreamed of changing the system. That has certainly come true! We can see...
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Deinstitutionalization Did Not Cause Homelessness: Loss of Low-income Housing and Disability Benefits Did
I recently read yet another article that blames homelessness on deinstitutionalization. Yes, a disproportionate number of homeless people have long-term mental disorders, and yes some—perhaps a third—of these people would have been in state hospitals 65 or 70 years ago when that was pretty much...
