![Narcan case aims to increase awareness, save lives]()
by LaMara HunterKelly | Nov 17, 2016 | In The News
Recorder Staff/Tom Relihan Sarah Ahern of Greenfield demonstrates the use of a new Narcan carrying case designed to increase access to the lifesaving overdose reversal medication and reduce the stigma around opioid addiction.By TOM RELIHAN
For the Gazette
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
GREENFIELD — Minutes matter when a person is experiencing an opioid overdose, and the quicker a person can administer the life-saving medication Narcan, the better are the odds of survival.
Now, one local addiction activist is working with a nonprofit organization that rose out of a recent Opioid Epidemic Hackathon in Boston — We Are Allies Inc. — to develop a field case that will allow people to carry the medication with them without it spoiling, and respond quickly in an emergency.
The bright purple case is designed to be worn outwardly, clipped to a hand bag or belt loop, said Sarah Ahern, the local activist and founder of addiction awareness group End The Stigma.
“The idea is to destigmatize the disease and enlist a community response,” Ahern said.
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by LaMara HunterKelly | Oct 31, 2016 | In The News
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg visited the RECOVER Project on Federal Street Wednesday for a roundtable discussion on addiction.By TOM RELIHAN
Recorder Staff
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
GREENFIELD — Despite a coordinated push over the last few years to increase substance abuse support and recovery services in Franklin County, there are still some holes in the net.
State Senate President Stanley Rosenberg heard from members of the local recovery community and the regional Opioid Task Force Wednesday afternoon about exactly which ones they’d like him to focus on plugging up during the next legislative term at a roundtable discussion at The RECOVER Project…
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by LaMara HunterKelly | Sep 7, 2016 | In The News
Guide for Parents –A supplement of The Greenfield Recorder produced by the Communities the Care Coalition
Wednesday September 7th 2016
Ask the Wellness Guru (aka Michael Lewis, RECOVER Project Director and Facilitator of the Nurturing Fathers Program)
by LaMara HunterKelly | Aug 16, 2016 | In The News
BOSTON GLOBE -AUGUST 12, 2016
OPINION | By Sera Davidow
THE AVERAGE citizen has now heard (multiple times) the story of people with psychiatric diagnoses who are slipping through the state’s cracks, how their families are desperate but lack resources, and how the mental health system is failing us all. Yet there are two related stories that are hardly getting told: one good, and the other very, very bad.
Let’s start with the latter. While so many people argue for increased access to treatment, few stop to examine those elements of which it is composed. Here’s just a handful of the many points getting missed:
• Patients of the mental health system are dying, on average, 25 years younger than the rest of us, according to the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors.
• The highest suicide risk directly follows forced hospitalization.
• Unlike with diseases such as diabetes, outcomes for psychiatric diagnoses have not improved.
• Long-term use of psychiatric drugs appears to beckon worse outcomes for many, and even short-term use potentially increases the risk of violence.
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by LaMara HunterKelly | Aug 8, 2016 | In The News
Caroline White at the office of the Hearing Voices Network in Holyoke, Mass. The program, which relies on members supporting one another, does not use the words “patient” or “treatment.” Ms. White, who hears voices in her head, said psychiatric therapy had made her feel “hopeless, because the drugs just made me feel worse.” Photo Credit – Sasha Maslov for The New York TimesBy Benedict Carey
Aug. 8, 2016
HOLYOKE, Mass. — Some of the voices inside Caroline White’s head have been a lifelong comfort, as protective as a favorite aunt. It was the others — “you’re nothing, they’re out to get you, to kill you” — that led her down a rabbit hole of failed treatments and over a decade of hospitalizations, therapy and medications, all aimed at silencing those internal threats.
At a support group here for so-called voice-hearers, however, she tried something radically different. She allowed other members of the group to address the voice, directly:
What is it you want?
“After I thought about it, I realized that the voice valued my safety, wanted me to be respected and better supported by others,” said Ms. White, 34, who, since that session in late 2014, has become a leader in a growing alliance of such groups, called the Hearing Voices Network, or HVN.
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