News & Notes

Note: Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center will observe Mental Health Awareness Month in May with stories of hope and recovery. LaRisa Chambers understands the importance of planned giving. She does it for a living. She also practices what she preaches. Chambers is a senior development director for KU Endowment, the fundraising organization for the University of Kansas. She handles major gifts and planned gifts for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and its 54 depar

Note: Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center will observe Mental Health Awareness Month in May with stories of hope and recovery. Kevin Hines spends 300 days a year on the road, sharing his story around the world. His motivation is simple. “It’s seeing the positive reactions from people who tell me their lives have been changed,” Hines said in a phone interview from his home in Atlanta. “That’s what motivates me.” Seventeen years ago, the then 19-year-old Hines took a bus t

Note: Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center will observe Mental Health Awareness Month in May with stories of hope and recovery. Suicide is something Lisa Doffing had thought about for a long time. Since she was 9, in fact. She’s now 49. “I remember telling my step-mother and her boyfriend that I didn’t want to live anymore,” Doffing said. “I never engaged in self-harm, like cutting or anything, but the desire to be at peace was very much present in my life.” Today, Doffin

Note: Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center will observe Mental Health Awareness Month in May with stories of hope and recovery. Eleven years ago, Danny Henderson was home alone when he suffered a debilitating stroke. He was 36. Three days later, a friend came to the house and found him. Doctors told him later he was hours away from dying. Today, Henderson still feels the lingering effects of the stroke, and he had knee replacement last October, but he’s feeling better all

Note: Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center will observe Mental Health Awareness Month in May with stories of hope and recovery. Brad Burnside considers himself an introvert. “I think some people are surprised by that,” said Burnside, who is the market president of US Bank in Lawrence and the incoming chair of the Bert Nash Governing Board of Directors. The demands of his job and the associated civic responsibilities often put him in public positions that are not necessari

Note: Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center will observe Mental Health Awareness Month in May with stories of hope and recovery. For Maggie Crowder, forgetting the past wasn’t the hard part. Remembering was. She wished she could forget. But she couldn’t. Years of abuse had left her with memories — more like nightmares— she couldn’t shake. But thanks to a treatment she went through at the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center called exposure therapy, as well as individua

Note: Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center will observe Mental Health Awareness Month in May with stories of hope and recovery. Just like CPR training helps a layperson with no medical training learn life-saving skills, Mental Health First Aid helps a person with no clinical background know how to intervene when someone is experiencing a mental health crisis, such as contemplating suicide. That’s what Doug Stephens, a longtime Lawrence businessman, had to do when a friend

Patrick Schmitz knows he is joining some select company. Schmitz, 51, will become just the third CEO of the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center in nearly 40 years. He will succeed David Johnson, who is in his 17th year as CEO of the Bert Nash Center and is retiring the first of July. Johnson’s predecessor, Sandra Shaw, was CEO of the Center for more than 20 years. “I’m very excited,” Schmitz said. “The more I went through the process, and the more I found out about Bert

When his friend and mentor Maurice Joy asked him to join the Bert Nash Investment Committee in 1996, Bill Beedles didn’t hesitate to serve. “There was a resignation on the committee and he asked me to join, and I was thrilled to do so,” Beedles said. Then he was asked by Joy in 2010 to take over as chair of the Investment Committee. Again Beedles didn’t hesitate. “He didn’t have to ask twice,” Beedles said. “I was flattered.” Beedles went on to serve as the Investment Committ

Bert Nash offers a variety of group therapy options, depending on the evolving needs of Douglas County residents. One of the newest therapy groups is for transgender men and women. “We try to meet the needs of everybody who walks through the door,” said Amy Hammer, Adult Outpatient Program therapist who leads the new transgender group. The group started in January with seven people. “This is a group for transgender men and women who may have mental health concerns,” Hammer sa

When the Bert Nash Center was building its Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) programs in the 1990s, it received a lot of consultation and support from other program professionals who were ahead of the curve. Now, it’s returning the favor. “It feels very collaborative and collegial versus competitive and hierarchical,” said Juliet Nelson, who is the Bert Nash IOP/DBT team leader. “I think all of the practitioners who are sincerely invol

The 70-year-old client is an accountant by trade. So, when Ruth Shadel, Bert Nash aging specialist, talked to him about the cost and benefits of his actions, that made sense. “But this was a different context,” the client said. Shadel and the client connected not on a numbers level but on a trust level, which is important in the client-therapist relationship. “You have to have that,” said Shadel, who started the Center’s Successful Aging Program in 2004. The program provides