WOOSTER — Monday was World Mental Health Day, but for the Mental Health & Recovery Board of Wayne & Holmes Counties and their funded partners, every day is mental health day.
Deputy Director Robert Smedley shared a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: Life's most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?”
The MHRB and its funded partner agencies, like OneEighty, The Counseling Center, Anazao Community Partners, Catholic Charities and NAMI Wayne and Holmes Counties, are providing recovery leadership to others in an effort to work together to answer King’s question, Smedley said.
Recovery advocacy is important, Executive Director Judy Wortham Wood said before presenting David Noble and his family with a Shining Light Award.
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Michael Flaherty, a psychologist from the Pittsburgh area, laid out a foundation for how a recovery-oriented system of care (ROSC) could be built here. Creating this kind of system has as an underlying concept mental illness and addiction need to be treated as chronic diseases.
Flaherty covered a wide-spectrum of issues dealing with recovery in his presentation. The demands of health care today include greater focus on preventing illness and promoting wellness; increasing access to care; coordinating and integrating care and treatment; increased focus on positive outcomes; and shrinking budgets, Flaherty said.
Flaherty encouraged area leaders to build a system involving all players and developing a community-based model for population health in what he called “braiding” services together.
Before managed care comes, Flaherty said there should be a community plan in place. The message needs to be focused on how the managed care organization fits into the local plan and not how the local plan fits into the MCO. “Tell them, you are not here to manage their money, but to provide health, wellness and recovery,” he