How does a person with a mental illness apply for a job? What do they tell employers about themselves or their family member? What if transportation is needed? What about meeting the cost of medications, and the risk of benefit loss? Sharon and Angie answer these questions, while encouraging listeners to have a benefits planner and a “Ticket to Work”.  All the rules and regulations about returning to work were confusing to me, and seemed a little overwhelming, but Sharon and Angie make it sound much less complicated, and much more do-able!

To learn more about disabilities in the workplace, click on the play button below to listen to the June 21 Not Alone podcast. To listen to past broadcasts, visit The Kim Foundation Web site Not Alone podcast page. 

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June 21 – Disabilities in the Workplace

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Airing every Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. (CST on station KCRO, channel 660 AM based out of Omaha, Neb.), Not Alone is a live talk radio program focused on behavioral health and recovery. Developed by The Kim Foundation through the support of C&A Industries, Inc., Not Alone works to reduce the stigma often associated with mental illness. The show seeks to assure individuals, families, and communities that they are not alone, mental illness affects us all, hosting a variety of guest from across the country.

Started in July 2008, the goal of the Assessment, Support and Prevention (ASAP) program is to provide immediate assistance to individuals in crisis with mental illness and substance abuse disorders and to ensure that they are served in the least restrictive, most normative setting possible. Since its inception, ASAP boasts an average response time of 11 minutes to crisis calls with nearly 1000 individuals in crisis being served during the last three years. 

“Mental health crisis interventions are time consuming for Law Enforcement and can become more traumatic to those in crisis.  The ASAP therapist’s goal is to intervene, in a timely fashion, and help return the individual to their pre-crisis state,” Darin Nelson, Heartland Family Service ASAP program director said.

ASAP therapists are on-call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year responding to calls from Law Enforcement anywhere in Sarpy County within 30 minutes. After assessing the individual(s) in crisis, the therapist will make recommendations to law enforcement for the best course of action to provide safety, support, and referral to the individual. ASAP will then complete a 24-hour telephone follow up with the individual to assess the needs post-crisis as well.

“This program is an important point in the intervention process for both those in crisis and law enforcement,” Nelson said. “By assisting in crisis intervention we are allowing officers to return more quickly to the field and giving them piece of mind by having a licensed mental health professional assist them in dealing with a mental health crisis.”

The program has seen tremendous growth in the past few months. In December 2010 the ASAP program extended its services to youth in crisis with the ability to respond to Student Resource Officers (SRO) in Papillion, Bellevue, and La Vista schools. In January 2011, Heartland Family Service expanded this program into Pottawattamie County, Iowa where the Mental Health Crisis Response Team (MHCRT) is the ASAP counterpart. Region 6 has partnered with the Nebraska Family Help Line and ASAP will respond, with an officer, to crisis calls that need a face-to-face intervention from the Help Line. 

Nelson says that the biggest challenge of the ASAP program is simply making sure officers know it is available.
“Often, while in the field, officers forget that they have the option of having ASAP respond to the crisis. Also, since there is always staff turnover with law enforcement, continual training needs to happen to keep everyone up to speed,” Nelson said. “We would like the opportunity to assist officers every time they encounter someone in a mental health crisis.”

To learn more about Heartland Family Service’s ASAP program, click here or contact Darin Nelson at dnelson@heartlandfamilyservice.org.

Dr. Carlat’s well documented book calls for psychiatrists to take a deep look at their practice, which basically consists of periodic medication checks for people with mental health challenges, and to return to their essential purpose which is to understand the human mind. He reminds us that psychiatrists can heal mental illnesses and not just treat symptoms, and laments the fact that too many psychiatrists have stopped doing psychotherapy and confined themselves to only medicating symptoms. Dr. Carlat feels that the practice of psychiatry has become “unhinged”, pried away from its original mission, which is to discover the causes of mental illness and to treat those causes, not merely the symptoms. 

In his book, Unhinged: The Trouble With Psychiatry  -  A Doctor’s Revelations About a Professional Crisis, Dr. Carlat laments that very few psychiatrists do psychoanalysis mostly due to reimbursement issues;  insurance companies don’t pay as much for counseling, so that treatment component is often referred on to licensed mental health practitioners including psychologists, social workers, etc. Patients would be better served, continues Dr. Carlat, if we took a more integrated approach and combined both medications and psychotherapy with both disciplines working more closely on the patients’ behalf.

Dr. Daniel Carlat will be in Omaha October 19, 2010 for a meeting with the Nebraska Psychiatric Society, and October 20 doing Grand Rounds for physicians and medical students through Creighton University Medical School, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Alegent Health System, Faith Regional Medical Center in Norfolk, and the VA Hospital System in Nebraska.

Click on the button below to listen to the October 12 Not Alone broadcast featuring the Dr. Carlat, or download the file and listen later. To listen to past broadcasts, visit The Kim Foundation Web site Not Alone Archive page.

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October 12 – Daniel Carlat, M.D.

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Airing every Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. (CST on station KCRO, channel 660 AM based out of Omaha, Neb.), Not Alone is a live talk radio program focused on behavioral health and recovery. Developed by The Kim Foundation through the support of C&A Industries, Inc., Not Alone works to reduce the stigma often associated with mental illness. The show seeks to assure individuals, families, and communities that they are not alone, mental illness affects us all, hosting a variety of guest from across the country.

It is true, however, that we may witness or experience very painful, embarrassing, even frightening symptoms of these brain diseases.  Symptoms or behaviors generated by these illnesses may be unappreciated, or even unacceptable, however the person underneath the symptoms is still a fine, good, and deserving person, a person to be treated with respect.

A good friend stands by us if we are covered by the red blotches of chicken pox, or bleeding profusely from an accident, or writhing in pain from a kidney stone, or needing a hat because of cancer treatments.  A good friend will be there, too, should the symptoms of a biological abnormality become overwhelming.  It is okay to love the person, and hate the illness.  Mental illnesses are just that, illnesses, with symptoms.