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WINTER 2009
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Featured Articles

» A Fight to Be

: "When you are diagnosed and treated for a major mental illness, your life's course is deeply affected by how you integrate that experience into your identity."

» Mental Health Empowerment Project Twentieth Annual Peer Network Gathering

: "People have learned how to chop off the heads of the leaders---so leadership must be diversified!"

» The Twenty-Sixth Annual NYAPRS Convention

: "...no standard of excellence is beyond our reach!"

» View All Winter 2009 Articles

A Fight to Be

A Psychologist's Experience From Both Sides Of The Locked Door

Ron Bassman

Ron Bassman has an insight not many others in the mental health field possess. Not only is he a provider of mental health services, but he is a person who has experienced psychiatric diagnosis and hospitalization as well. Ron Bassman knows about mental illness inside and out.

In this memoir, A Fight to Be - A Psychologist's Experience From Both Sides Of The Locked Door, the author writes candidly about his issues with mental illness and his life in general.

When Ron was in his early to mid twenties, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. It was summertime when his... (Click Here to Read More)

Mental Health Empowerment Project Twentieth Annual Peer Network Gathering

A Keynote Address by Vanessa Jackson LCSW

Paul Chipkin, Senior Peer Advocate, Staten Island Peer Advocacy Center

“I am unapologetically an angry black woman! Why aren’t you angry?
We want a queen! We want a queen! Kill the queen! Kill the queen!
You just need to discharge your rage so that you don’t destroy the person next to you, trying a different strategy!
People have learned how to chop off the heads of the leaders, so leadership must be diversified! There are all sorts of people out there doing things that we never hear about! What are your passions? What is your neighbor living for?
What happened to you? How does it affect you now? What do you need to heal? Though still wounded, what... (Click Here to Read More)

The Twenty-Sixth Annual NYAPRS Convention

A personal perspective

Paul Chipkin, Senior Peer Advocate, Staten Island Peer Advocacy Center

One needn’t look deeply at the offerings of the 26th annual NYAPRS convention, held at the Nevele Hotel, in Ellenville, NY, to know that there was enough of quality, to serve all appetites. There was so very much fun, rewarding and enlightening, so much richness to reap great satisfaction, from whatever one’s perspective. In the few days was ample opportunity to create one’s own personal “magic carpet-ride.” This is the story of what I found most meaningful---of course, I’m telling my own experience...a hundred different tales are ready to be recounted, thanks to the New York Association of... (Click Here to Read More)