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The Riggs Blog
The Riggs Blog is a mix of news about clinical work, research and educational activities from the Austen Riggs Center, as well as a source for information beyond our walls that we find interesting and thought-provoking. Senior clinical experts, researchers, and editors review all clinical content on this blog before it is published.
Austen Riggs Center’s Dr. Eric M. Plakun collaborates with Kennedy Forum Illinois and other experts to provide template to help patients with insurance coverage.
A joint team of researchers from the Austen Riggs Center, Long Island University, and Rutgers University hypothesize that for certain psychiatric patients, disturbed sleep negatively impacts daily interactions with others, and those negative interactions can in turn increase the likelihood of suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
Freedom from Dehumanizing Treatment is one of the Four Freedoms that is a foundation of mental health. Dehumanizing treatment is different from stigma, which is another of the Four Freedoms of Mental Health, as it refers to treatment itself as opposed to more general beliefs, attitudes, and actions related to stigma in the larger world.
Dehumanizing treatment includes: unnecessary restriction, seclusion, or restraint of those struggling with mental disorders; treating mentally ill individuals as merely a diagnosis rather than full people; or treatment that regards patients as mouths to swallow pills instead of people with stories that are meaningful. Underfunding mental health treatment generally is the result of stigma, but this results in dehumanizing treatment.
World Mental Health Day (WMHD) is today, Thursday, October 10, and the focus this year is suicide prevention. Organized by the World Federation for Mental Health, WMHD helps to raise global awareness about mental health topics and issues.
On the WMHD website, we are all invited to join in “‘40 seconds of action’ to raise awareness of the scale of suicide around the world and the role that each of us can play to help prevent it.”
Austen Riggs Center Medical Director/CEO Eric M. Plakun, MD, outlines four tools to help maximize appeal success when insurance claims are denied.
America is facing a growing crisis in mental health treatment, and one of the greatest forces to fight that crisis is raising public awareness through the media. On Friday, November 1, two outstanding works will be honored with the 2019 Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media.
Austen Riggs Center staff members Katie Lewis, PhD, and Lee Watroba spoke on local radio programs about suicide prevention awareness.
The Erikson Institute for Education and Research of the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA invites applications for the fall 2020 Erikson Scholar-in-Residence. The Erikson Institute bridges the clinical work of the Austen Riggs Center, which treats patients with complex psychiatric disorders, and the wider academic and professional communities. Erikson Scholars engage in interdisciplinary work that spans a broad range of psychiatric, social, cultural and theoretical issues.
The Austen Riggs Center welcomed more than 200 individuals to our Centennial Conference–The Mental Health Crisis in America: Recognizing Problems, Working Toward Solutions–at Tanglewood’s new Linde Center for Music and Learning.
One of our proposed Four Freedoms of Mental Health is the freedom to pursue recovery.
Recovery from mental disorders is a process that unfolds over time; the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) defines recovery as “a process of change through which people improve their health and wellness, live self-directed lives, and strive to reach their full potential” (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2019). Living a self-directed life is a cornerstone of recovery—and a central focus of treatment at Riggs. Given the real obstacles posed by stigma, limited clinical models to help address mental illness for many individuals, and lack of access to medically necessary treatment—especially in the tendency of many insurance entities to limit access to care to crisis stabilization—the prospect of achieving recovery can be daunting.
Dr. Fonagy will give the Session 3 keynote presentation, “The Consequences of Losing Epistemic Trust: A Perspective from the UK on Mental Disorders that Persist and Resist Treatment,” on Sunday morning at the Austen Riggs Centennial Conference, “The Mental Health Crisis in America.”
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