Bernards Voices

In recognition of the 25th Anniversary of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (February 26-March 3, 2012) the Healthy Outcomes Partnership, an initiative of the Somerset Hills YMCA, invites you to join us in a discussion of healing and hope.

Come hear a young woman share about her struggle with anorexia and her journey to recovery. Listen to our panel of experts as they talk about the signs and symptoms of eating disorders and available treatment options. Get the information and resources you need to help your child, your friend, your loved one.

Everybody Knows Somebody

Wednesday, February 29th, 7:00pm

at the Somerset Hills YMCA

This event is free & open to the community

For more information on this event and other upcoming mental heathworkshops email SusanVisser, Healthy Outcomes Coordinator at svisser@somersethillsymca.org

The Somerset Hills YMCA will be offering a 3 session Mental Health First Aid Training class to the community on Thursdays, February 23rd, March 1st & March 8th 2012 from 5:00pm-9:00pm. Participants must be able to attend all three sessions.  The cost is $75 which includes a light dinner, handbook and materials.

Mental Health First Aid is a groundbreaking, evidence based public education program that helps participants identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders.

Mental Health First Aid is offered in the form of an interactive 12-hour course that presents an overview of mental illness and substance use disorders in the U.S. and introduces participants to risk factors and warning signs of mental health problems, builds understanding of their impact, and overviews common treatments.

Those who take the 12-hour certification course will learn a 5-step action plan to help an individual in crisis connect with appropriate professional, peer, social, and self-help care.

This course has benefited a variety of audiences and key professions, including: primary care professionals, employers and business leaders, faith communities, school personnel and educators, state police and corrections officers, nursing home staff, mental health authorities, state policymakers, volunteers, families and the general public.

For more information on this upcoming training contact Susan Visser, Healthy Outcomes Partnership Coordinator at the Somerset Hills YMCA at svisser@somersethillsymca.org or 908-766-7898 x553

The Somerset Hills YMCA will be offering Mental Health First Aid Training to the community on October 18 & 25, 2011.

Mental Health First Aid is a groundbreaking, evidence based public education program that helps participants identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders.

Mental Health First Aid is offered in the form of an interactive 12-hour course that presents an overview of mental illness and substance use disorders in the U.S. and introduces participants to risk factors and warning signs of mental health problems, builds understanding of their impact, and overviews common treatments.

Those who take the 12-hour certification course will learn a 5-step action plan to help an individual in crisis connect with appropriate professional, peer, social, and self-help care.

This course has benefited a variety of audiences and key professions, including: primary care professionals, employers and business leaders, faith communities, school personnel and educators, state police and corrections officers, nursing home staff, mental health authorities, state policymakers, volunteers, families and the general public.

For more information on this upcoming training contact Susan Visser, Healthy Outcomes Partnership Coordinator at the Somerset Hills YMCA at svisser@somersethillsymca.org or 908-766-7898 x553

This is the last post for a while. Not getting many readers.
rgds, Bill

Mental Health Week, an educational collaboration between the Somerset Hills YMCA’s Healthy Outcomes Partnership (HOP) and the Mental Health Association in New Jersey (MHANJ), will run Monday, May 9, through Friday, May 13, 2011 and will include presentations and workshops by a variety of noted experts in behavioral health, parenting, special needs and public health and education. All members of the community are invited to attend these free (unless otherwise noted) events; a complete schedule can be viewed at www.somersethillsymca.org.

Featured Keynote Speakers include:

DR. MONICA INDART:
“Complicated Grief & Bereavement: Living with the Pain of Loss”

Kicking off the week is Monica Indart, PsyD, an internationally recognized thought leader with more than 25 years of experience working in crisis intervention, trauma, grief and loss in both private practice and around tragic global events including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the southeast Asian tsunami of 2004 and the genocides in Uganda and Rwanda. Dr. Indart, a licensed clinical psychologist, has developed a widely-used disaster crisis counselor certification program, has provided consultation to the United Nations and has traveled around the world working toward recovery and peace building with survivors of torture and other traumatic events.
Dr. Indart’s talk during Mental Health Week, “Complicated Grief & Bereavement: Living with the Pain of Loss,” will weave together her vast international experience and observations with practical counsel for individuals and families dealing with trauma and grief.
Monday, May 9: 9:00 am – 10:30 am, Multi-Purpose Room, Main Level, Somerset Hills YMCA

DR. MICHAEL OSIT:
“Generation Text: Raising Well-Adjusted Kids in an Age of Instant Everything”

Psychologist, educator and parenting expert Michael M. Osit, EdD, the author of Generation Text: Raising Well-Adjusted Kids in an Age of Instant Everything (Amacom, 2008), will address the concerns of parents the world over regarding the potential negative effects of various forms of digital communication and provide insights on how parents can help their children learn to make intelligent choices. Dr. Osit has worked with young people for more than 30 years and has assisted families who have been challenged by the new order of access and excess – and the temptations and other dangers that go with it. He is a frequent presenter on a wide variety of topics for professionals, parents and schools and has been interviewed by prominent national and local print and broadcast media. He currently writes the “Mind to Mind” column in WarrenConnection and is in private practice in Warren, NJ.
Wednesday, May 11: 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm, Multi-Purpose Room, Main Level, Somerset Hills YMCA (Suggested donation: $5.00 per person; Dr. Osit will be selling and signing books after his talk)

BRYAN V. GIBB:
“Mental Health First Aid for the Somerset Hills”

You may know CPR and the Heimlich Maneuver. But would you know how to help if faced with a friend, loved one or stranger’s mental health crisis? Bryan Gibb, a nationally known-speaker and trainer will introduce an innovative community education program – Mental Health First Aid – which trains individuals to understand, recognize and provide help to those experiencing the symptoms of mental distress until appropriate professional or other help can be engaged. This ground-breaking program has been taught in more than 15 countries, and in the United States alone, more than 20,000 people in 44 states have taken the course in the past three years. It is now being brought to our community through the Somerset Hills YMCA and its Healthy Outcomes Partnership initiative. Mr. Gibb will describe the human costs associated with mental illness, its prevalence in our society and the documented success of Mental Health First Aid in reducing the stigma that frequently prevents people from seeking help.
As Director of Public Education for the National Council on Community Behavioral Healthcare, Mr. Gibb travels across the country to run 5-day instructor certification courses required for those who will teach Mental Health First Aid. He worked closely with the city of Tucson in the aftermath of the tragic shootings in January, and is a frequent guest on Washington, DC-area television and radio talk shows.
Wednesday, May 11: 2:00 – 3:30pm, Multi-Purpose Room, Main Level, Somerset Hills YMCA

LESLIE BECKER-PHELPS, PHD:
“Compassionate Self-Awareness: An Approach to Making Real Change”

There are many self-help books that tell people what they need to do to change — to lose weight, find love, get rich, be happy, stop smoking — just to name a few. And sometimes, that advice happens to fit with how people think and function, and it works. But, according to Dr. Leslie Becker-Phelps, a clinical psychologist and regular columnist and blogger on WebMD.com and Psychology Today.com, all too often, people blindly follow the advice without feeling that it truly applies to them — and inevitably, their efforts fail. Dr. Becker-Phelps will explain how we can be controlled by unconscious processes that act as “invisible puppeteers”, as well as how we can cut those strings using “compassionate self-awareness” — a balance of self-compassion and self-awareness – to make lasting change.
In addition to her roles as relationship expert on WebMD’s Relationships and Coping Community, blogger, lecturer and psychologist in private practice in Basking Ridge, Dr. Becker-Phelps is on the medical staff at Somerset Medical Center, where she previously served as chief of psychology and director of Women’s Psychological Services
Monday, May 9: 1:00 – 2:00 pm, Multi-Purpose Room, Main Level, Somerset Hills YMCA

Community Hope will host the Annual Forum on Mental Health on Thursday, May 26, 2011 beginning at 12:45 p.m. at the Lewis Morris Park Cultural Center, 300 Mendham Road in Morris Township.

The theme of this year’s event is “Creating Positive Energy for Wellness: Innovative Strategies for Discovering Inner Strength”. The workshop presentations will be conducted by Jeanne Rohach, a freelance workshop facilitator who specializes in the areas of self-esteem and stress reduction; Anna Marie Van Eck, Director of LearningRx in Florham Park and Debbie Morris, a movement coach.

The Forum is an educational event promoting wellness and recovery for health care professionals; individuals with mental illness; their family members and caregivers. The Forum is also open to the public. For more information or to register go to http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e3maqdv6e88c14b6&llr=pytra5bab

Part of the argument against the war in Iraq is that it is spending money that would be better put to use domestically. Many Americans are taken aback that the Bush Administration would commit half a trillion dollars to an unprovoked and "preemptive" war, which evidently it had already been contemplating prior to 9/11, while resisting even the token expansion of social programs at home.

The latest debate over the expansion of the S-CHIP program is yet another example of this mean-spirited and misguided set of policy priorities. What is surprising is that the Bush Administration, and a majority of the Republicans in Congress, would be willing to oppose expanded health care for children as a wasteful use of taxpayer money – and actually seem to be getting away with it.

Not surprisingly, our own Congressman, Rodney Frelighuysen, has taken up all of the Administration’s disingenuous arguments and deceptive statistics, to suggest that many of the families that would be getting the money don’t really need it, and are already covered by private insurance.

But the facts – as documented (amongst other places) at FactCheck.org – are otherwise.

[President Bush] said it "would result" in covering children in families with incomes up to $83,000 per year, which isn’t true. The Urban Institute estimated that 70 percent of children who would gain coverage are in families earning half that amount, and the bill contains no requirement for setting income eligibility caps any higher than what’s in the current law. (The compromise bill that was released a few days after Bush’s press conference does rescind an administration effort to block New York state from increasing its eligibility cap to that level.)

He also said the program was "meant to help poor children," when in fact Congress stated that it was meant to expand insurance coverage beyond the poor and to cover millions of "low-income" children who were well above the poverty line. Under current law most states cover children at twice or even three times the official poverty level.

The president also says Congress’ expansion is a step toward government-run health care for all. It’s true that some children and families with private insurance are expected to shift to the government program. But the Congressional Budget Office estimates that such a shift is relatively low considering the number of uninsured these bills would reach.

And so what if it were a step toward "government-run health care for all"? This is something that all other developed countries already have, something that would be good for business, and something that could significantly improve the longevity, productivity, and quality of life of the American people.

Universal health care is also something that all major Democratic candidates have promised to do if elected, and it may be that this time they are serious. Republicans should embrace this as well, instead of worrying about "socialized medicine" (which might mean they have to wait in line for optional procedures, instead of being able to "crowd out" the basic needs of low-income children with their bucks and their comfortable health plans), especially if they want to ensure that benefits go to those who can least afford them. They complain that some children will abandon existing private insurance in order to go on the government plan, and they call this "crowd-out," as if it were some further inequity; but nothing could be further from the truth.

As Jonathan Cohn writes in The New Republic (Sept. 8, 2007),

There is one way to avoid crowd-out altogether – one solution in which taxpayer dollars would theoretically subsidize only those people who needed assistance, so that everybody would pay what they could for health insurance but not more. The government could simply require that all Americans buy into one common insurance program, adjusting each person’s contribution by income, so that those Americans with more money helped cover the cost of health insurance for those with less.

Does this elegant solution have a name? Why, yes it does. It’s called universal health care. I’m all for it. Most conservatives, alas, are not.

Rodney Frelinghuysen is one of those who is not. Like the lock-step chorus of other rightwing voices, from Bush down to Rush Limbaugh, he’s doing his bit to denigrate children’s health care as "excessive spending," and pretending that the Bush proposals "put poor children first." While invariably complaining about tax-and-spend liberals, Republicans have done more in the past six years to bankrupt the nation’s treasury, to redistribute wealth to the upper levels of society, and to guarantee that Americans will be paying off foreign lenders for decades to come. As in most other policy areas, it’s the strategy of the big lie. And that’s been done before in recent history, with absolutely disastrous results.

It’s time for a change. It’s time to speak out against hypocrisy. And it’s time to tell it like it is, rather than letting the right wing get away with redefining the terms of the debate, trying to badger and scare the American people, pretending to want unity and creating the divisiveness between people in the first place.

Jonathan Cloud,  October 28, 2007