Boston Agency Fills Void in Mental Health Care for Black Youth

Kermit Crawford, PhD, a clinical psychologist, is the director of the Center for Multicultural Mental Health and the Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology, at Boston Medical Center. (pic: Sandra Larson, BayStateBanner.com)

The following excerpt is from BayStateBanner.com, July 15, 2010.

State initiative offers children services 

On a hot Friday morning in July, two dozen people dedicated to improving the lives of Boston’s children and youth converged in a conference room at Children’s Services of Roxbury (CSR).

This month’s theme was safety. Participants pondered how to forge stronger connections with Boston schools and police. They shared information about community resources and youth job opportunities. Solutions ranged from youth-police partnership programs to parent training and summer camps.

Everything was smooth until a critical voice interrupted.

“You’re all being too nice,” said Dr. Mathieu Bermingham, a child/adolescent psychiatrist who joined CSR as medical director last July. He pointed out the recent spate of shootings in the city.

“Young people shooting each other is not typically thought of as a mental health issue,” he said, “but I suspect kids caught up in these things have experienced some sort of trauma. What’s your sense, your experience of what’s behind this?”

It’s that sort of stimulating conversation that makes these Systems of Care Steering Committee meetings critical to developing successful strategies. CSR has hosted nearly a dozen such meetings over the past year.

That day’s meeting included representatives from the state Department of Mental Health, and a range of local nonprofits, including Pyramid Builders, Action for Boston Community Development, the Institute for Health and Recovery, Boston Emergency Services Team (BEST), Beacon Health Strategies and Mass Behavioral Health Partnership. About half of the meeting’s attendees were members of CSR’s growing behavioral health staff.

These regular, multi-stakeholder discussions of how to help youth and families from many directions are an example of the new coordinated, collaborative system of care ushered in by the Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative (CBHI), a sweeping initiative implemented by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) just over a year ago.

Read the rest of the story here at BayStateBanner.com.  Click here for Banner advertising info.

Source:  Bay State Banner 

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