NEWS, COMMENTARY, AND ARTS BY PSYCHIATRIC SURVIVORS, MENTAL HEALTH PEERS, AND OUR FAMILIES
VOL. XXXVI NO. 2
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FROM THE HILLS OF VERMONT
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SINCE 1985
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FALL 2021
Improving Emergency Psychiatric Assessment, Treatment, and Healing MONTPELIER – With new attention to the increases in emergency room use for mental health crises, a national expert was brought in for a conference this summer to advise local hospitals about improving the quality of care. He proposed a model called EmPath – emergency psychiatric assessment, treatment, and healing – which creates a more welcoming space in a separate part of the hospital where treatment can begin, and average stays are less than 24 hours. The model aligns with many features proposed by psychiatric survivors except for the most basic one: that it be peer-led and communitybased as an alternative to hospital ERs. More that 100 people attended the conference by Zoom, about half from area hospitals and the rest from a broad array of providers, state administrators, other health organizations and the public, according to the Vermont Program for Quality in Health Care, which co-hosted the event with the Vermont Association for Hospitals and Health Systems. Scott Zeller, MD, asserted that it was “wishful
thinking” that community crisis centers could keep people out of ERs because their exclusion criteria limited them to help those with “mild to moderate symptoms.”
“We need to change the whole mindset” to be able to actually help people instead of leaving them to wait for days for a transfer to an inpatient bed. He said he supported such crisis centers, but people in severe crisis still end up being sent to ERs, and that it is there that “we need to change the whole mindset” to be able to actually help people instead of leaving them to wait for days for a transfer to an inpatient bed.
Zeller is Vice President for Acute Psychiatry at Vituity, a hospital consulting group, and spent years as an emergency room psychiatrist. He described the problem as an ER perspective that its role in psychiatric care is to do medical screening and “send you to a psych hospital.” That ignores the legal obligation to treat mental health emergencies “with the same level of attention” as any other health emergency. The increase in emergencies and lack of beds results in days of waiting, and people who are “often in a lot of anguish” are left suffering and sometimes escalate into aggression, he said. Those responses are then seen as criminal behavior and the response is to call security, use restraints or call the police when these are actually symptoms of an illness, he added. He likened it to telling a person, “stop having that asthma attack or I’m calling security,” instead of intervening in a way to help someone reduce their symptoms. Zeller stressed the need to listen to patients and ask, “how can we help,” even when “it might be a little more difficult to understand” a person (Continued on page 4)
Peer Operated Projects Leading the Way to Better Support Vermont Psychiatric Survivors funds several Peer Operated Projects (POP) throughout the state. The highlights of the activities of these POP projects are described in this article, with a special focus this time on Rene Rose from the Northeast Kingdom.
Art is Our Sanctuary Eryn Sheehan and Kara Greenblott, coordinate Art is our Sanctuary, a POP project throughout the greater Burlington area. With funding from VPS, the Arts Collective put on several exhibitions this year, featuring the art of more than 20 artists. Summary of Activities: Members of the Arts Collective created new artwork for the Arts So Wonderful Gallery, in the University Mall,
Mental Health Peer Engagement
for the months of April and May. Nearly all of the artists attended the reception, and there was a live jazz band courtesy of the gallery. There were approximately 75 people in attendance at the reception, and the gallery was open to the public four days per week during the two-monthlong exhibition. The artwork of three different artists was sold at this show, one of which was a first-time sale for the artist, and she was thrilled! The VPS grant paid for art supplies for the two Arts Collective studios at which many of the artists made their art during Open Studio. In addition to art supplies, the VPS grant funded the purchase of
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Artwork by Stephen Tall frames, wire, and other hardware for hanging the artwork in the gallery. (Continued on page 5)
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Integration Council