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World Mental Health Day: Five Ways to Truly Make Mental Health a Priority

By Traci Donnelly
Chief Executive Officer

A young person in a therapy session at the child center residential treatment facility.The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted young people’s mental health—and adults’, too, if we’re being honest—so the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Day theme of making mental health and well-being for all a global priority could not have come at a better time.

If you are struggling with your mental health, you are not alone. Mental and public health professionals of all nations and cultures are reporting that their clients are feeling overwhelmed, uncertain, anxious, helpless, frustrated, stressed, and exhausted. Not surprisingly, these emotions are leading to a decrease in frustration tolerance and an increase in anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Continue reading

Suicide Prevention Awareness Month

clients at residential treatment facility in brooklyn

Clients at The Child Center Residential Treatment Facility, one of many Child Center programs that serve adolescents with mental health needs

The changing face of challenge in American adolescence—and how to meet it

By Jennifer Blitzer, LCSW-R
Program Director, Woodside Youth Intensive Outpatient Program

American adolescence is changing. Three decades ago, the biggest public health threats to teenagers came from binge drinking, drunk driving, teenage pregnancy, and smoking. All have fallen sharply in the United States. In their place are soaring rates of mental illness. Continue reading

A Perspective on Gender and Racial Equity: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Hearings

Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson
Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson

Photo credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

By Sonia Banks, Ph.D.
Senior Vice President, Organizational Culture and Talent Development

The nation was mesmerized in recent days by the Senate confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s first nominee to the United State Supreme Court.

The importance of the Court to American life cannot be overstated — its decisions impact our government, our economy, our family lives. If confirmed, Judge Jackson would make history as the first Black woman to sit on the Court, a long-overdue breakthrough that is anxiously awaited by many.

But the hearings themselves have been an embarrassing, infuriating chapter in this history-making story unfolding during Women’s Herstory Month. Continue reading

Mental Health in NYC: A look back at ThriveNYC and ahead to the Office of Community Health

Michele Neuhaus with Chrirlane McCray at Gracie Mansion

By Michele Neuhaus, LCAT, LMHC, CCLS
Program Director, 0-5 Early Childhood Mental Health Services

a client of the early childhood mental health initiative, ThriveNYC, now Office of Community Mental Health

Strengthening the parent-child bond is core part of the 0-5 ECMH initiative.

Last month, my colleague Yudelka Ramirez, a family peer advocate with The Child Center of NY’s 0-5 Early Childhood Mental Health Initiative, and I attended a Mental Health Allies Reception, hosted by Mayor Bill de Blasio and First Lady Chirlaine McCray at Gracie Mansion. Continue reading

National Hispanic Heritage Month

Image Credit: Detail of Hispanic Heritage Select Photos, by David Valdez at Hispanic Heritage Month

What Is National Hispanic Heritage Month?

Each year, Americans observe National Hispanic Heritage Month from September 15 to October 15, celebrating the histories, cultures, and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.

The observance started in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Week under President Lyndon Johnson and was expanded by President Ronald Reagan in 1988 to cover a 30-day period starting on September 15 and ending on October 15. It was enacted into law on August 17, 1988, on the approval of Public Law 100-402.
Continue reading

Seven Tips for Adjusting Infants, Toddlers, and Young Children to In-Person School and Child Care

Two girls at in-person school at Head Start in Corona

By Michele Neuhaus, LCAT, LMHC, CCLS
Program Director, 0-5 Early Childhood Mental Health Initiative

Two girls at in-person school at Head Start in CoronaAs New York City families prepare for the return to in-person school on September 13, there’s one group of children who may need special care: the 0-5 set, babies and preschoolers who may never have been to in-person school or child care, and who haven’t experienced or don’t remember pre-COVID life. How do we help these children adjust? What mental health pitfalls and opportunities should parents look out for? Continue reading

Statement on Current COVID-19 Crises Around the World

The Child Center of NY, like the communities we come from and serve, is rich in diversity. We are proud that our team members and clients represent more than 30 cultures and speak over two dozen languages.  

The range of lived experiences we bring includes being recent immigrants, living across the world from loved ones during an unprecedented pandemic. We are also caregivers with a deep love for humanity. When devastating events are unfolding around us, they do not feel like tragedies in a faraway place. They impact us deeply as humans, and on a personal level, as many of us have family abroad in places suffering the most. The communities we see in the media that are currently being impacted are made up of our family and friends and people like us.    Continue reading

On International Women’s Day, #ChooseToChallenge Ourselves with Bold Change

By Traci Donnelly, Chief Executive Officer

Trina (with son Terrell) was one of many women who faced impossible choices when the COVID-19 pandemic exposed how few supports women have.

Incremental change is no longer an option for those who seek to improve the lives of marginalized populations — and if we’re to be honest with ourselves, it never was. After a year of profound loss and social upheaval, the inequalities and deep, historic injustices we’ve been content to just live with have never stood out so dramatically.

This can be painful, but it is also hopeful: It is in this new climate of painful change that opportunities for progress have emerged. Against this backdrop, we mark International Women’s Day 2021 with the theme #ChooseToChallenge. Continue reading


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