News & Notes

As a member of the Emerging Leaders Academy, a professional development program offered through the University of Kansas Public Management Center, Amy Warren took a test designed to identify her strengths and show her how to use them. The test revealed something about herself she already knew. “The results showed I couldn’t work someplace unless I really believed in what I was doing,” Warren said. “So it made sense why I work here.” Warren is the outpatient team leader at the

Eudora’s school superintendent lauded funding that will extend Bert Nash’s WRAP (Working to Recognize Alternative Possibilities) program for another year in all three of the community’s schools. The WRAP workers in Eudora are Carla DeHetre (middle school), Amy Brown (high school) and Elizabeth Day (elementary school). WRAP workers are master’s-level mental health clinicians who work collaboratively with school counselors, teachers and administrators. “WRAP is a critical compo

Thursday, June 27, 2013, at the Community Health Facility, 200 Maine, Lawrence, Kansas Everyone Plays a Role in Suicide Prevention: Turning Strategy into Action The Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, Headquarters Counseling Center, and Kansas Youth Suicide Prevention invite you to join in this important local, state, and national discussion. Awareness + Tools = Change You will leave with information about what YOU can do, because “Everyone Plays A Role In Suicide Preve

David Johnson doesn’t have to look far for inspiration. In fact, he has to look no farther than his own office. There, hanging on the wall above his desk is a painting of one of the most inspirational people Johnson, CEO of the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, has ever known. The painting is of his father. Johnson’s father died in 2008, just shy of his 88th birthday. Oscar Johnson, who was a Lutheran pastor, overcame considerable physical limitations to leave a legac

It took awhile to see the results, but the fruit of Jake Keary’s labor is starting to show. And later this spring, the evidence should be in full bloom. To earn his Eagle Scout community service merit badge, Jake took on a landscaping project for the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center. Jake’s mom, Deb, is a Bert Nash clinician. Deb is an on-site therapist at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School as part of the Bert Nash WRAP (Working to Recognize Alternative Possibilit

Ron Fowler may not be comfortable speaking in front of a group. He prefers to express his thoughts and feelings in a different way. Writing poetry. Fowler was asked by Heidi Pritchard, a community support services case manager at Bert Nash, to share his experiences. He agreed, with one condition. “I told her I would do it, but I told her I don’t speak very well, so maybe I would write a poem. I put things down better in poetry,” Fowler said. “She said that would be great.” Pr

May is Bike Month, but every month is bike month for Bert Nash psychiatrist Joe Douglas. He rides his bicycle to work year-round, weather permitting, which is about a five-mile roundtrip.

Lawrence Mayor Michael Dever read a proclamation at Tuesday’s city commission meeting in observance of Mental Health Month, proclaiming “a commitment to community-based systems of mental health care for all residents” and “increasing awareness and understanding of mental illness and the need for appropriate and accessible services for all people with mental illness.”

With their long hair and long beards, they look like rock stars. But they don’t act like it. No limos or fivestar hotels for this band. But almost any day of the week you can find them at the Lawrence Community Shelter, or along the banks of the Kansas River, or in the downtown district. Or wherever the homeless are. Since 2006, a team of trained case managers from Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, through a partnership with the city of Lawrence and a federal grant, h

My days were dark for 30 plus years. With a degree in secondary education, I was a teacher until I was diagnosed with anorexia. I was dying — even though I didn’t know it — and I didn’t care. My doctor told me I wasn’t going to die on his watch. This opened my eyes. I really did want to live. My life was out of control. I was divorced, out of a job, out of a career. I was a goldfish in a turbulent ocean. I tried to go to school, hold a job. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do any

Starting in 1982, I had been in and out of hospitals. When I first was diagnosed with mental illness, I was a graduate student at the University of Kansas. During the first phase of my illness, I was teaching at KU and had won a Fulbright to go to Mexico to collect data for my degree. I had earned two master’s degrees and was working on my dissertation when my illness made it impossible for me to continue in the program. I was lost and went to private practitioners. My illnes

Over the past 25 years, Patricia Roach Smith has had the good fortune to change careers multiple times. Yet, she never had to move. She never had to change organizations. And she never thought she would spend her entire career at the same place. “Oh, my goodness, who stays in a job for 25 years?” said Roach Smith, chief operating officer at Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center. “People don’t do that anymore do they?” Roach Smith did. And she wouldn’t have had it any other