Date: Thursday, August 26, 2010 (Fourth Thursday)
Time: 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM
Speakers:
Heather Visengardi, MA, LLP, Manager of the Access and Utilization Team, OCCMHA
Juliana Stitz, LMSW, ACSW, CAAC, Director of Adult Services, Easter Seals
Carmen McIntyre, MD, Vice President of Medical Affairs, CNS
Andrea Orsini-Brown, LMSW, ACSW, CAC-R, Clinical Program Manager, TTI
Program Topic: Recovery Supports Program
Oakland County Community Mental Health Authority (OCCMHA) is implementing a new services program that provides less intensive support for those who are sufficiently recovered to have a reduced need for services. This program is intended to reduce unneeded services in order to free up funding and resources to provide more or better services for those who would otherwise be under served. Heather Visengardi will lead the presentation and representatives of the core agencies will comment on their implementations and respond to questions.
This program is particularly important for those clients whose services may be reduced so that they have appropriate expectations and understand how to obtain more intensive services if and when they are needed..
Date: Thursday, July 22, 2010 (Fourth Thursday)
Time: 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM
Program Topic: When Medicine Got it Wrong (A Documentary)
In the 1970s, small groups of families came together for mutual support and to advocate for improved treatment and services for persons with mental illness. Parents of persons with mental illness waged battles across the country in an era when mental hospitals were shutting down and the most severly ill patients were turned over to the promise of community care. Yet that community care rarely materialized.
Families launched the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) one of the fastest growing grassroots movements the nation had seen to date, ushering in an era of dramatic advances in understanding, treatment and brain research.
Medicine now knows that with proper treatment, many persons with mental illness can return to productive lives. However, the population at large still struggles with mental health policies and the necessary funding and management of mental health services, resulting in unnecessary suffering and sometimes criminalization of persons with difficult to treat afflictions.
This documentary provides a historical perspective on improvements in treatments and services, and provides inspiration for continued advocacy.
Everyone is welcome
These educational meetings are typically the fourth Thursday of each month. They are held at the Beaumont Hospital Administration Building. 3601 W. Thirteen Mile Road, Royal Oak, Michigan. In addition to updates on information of concern to families of persons with mental illness, there are speakers that include, psychiatrists, professionals, and service agencies. Refreshments will be available at 7:00 p.m. and the meetings begin at 7:30 p.m. If you have any suggestions for future meeting topics, you can call the AMI Oakland County office at 248-203-1998.
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