News & Notes

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

Amy Volweider can relate to what it’s like to be a millennial. Because she is one. Volweider is a therapist in the Adult Outpatient Program at the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center. At 28, she is at the upper end of the millennial age range, which is considered to be 18 to 34. So she can appreciate the issues and challenges facing millennials; she’s faced many of them herself. And is still facing them. “On a lot of levels, I get them,” Volweider said of her fellow mill

Charlie Kuszmaul, who retired in November, spent 25 years on staff at the Bert Nash Center. For most of that time — 19 years, to be exact — he was the driving force behind a program that places a mental health therapist in Douglas County schools. Known as WRAP, which stands for Working to Recognize Alternative possibilities, the in-school therapy program has touched the lives of “probably 10,000 kids” over the past nearly 20 years, said Kuszmaul, who joined the Bert Nash Cent

Bert Nash Center and Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority have a long history of working together. The newest partnership between the two organizations involves plans to develop an eight-unit apartment building adjacent to a proposed crisis center, across from the Bert Nash Center, 200 Maine St. “This is probably the strongest partnership between a community mental health center and a housing authority in the country,” Bert Nash Center CEO David Johnson said of the relat

Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center and the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority have received an award of $80,000 from the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation for continuation of the Community Support Services HOME tenant-based rental assistance program. The Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority will administer the funds. The Community Support Services HOME tenant-based rental assistance program is a collaboration between the Bert Nash Center and the Lawrence-