News stories from Counterpoint
Plan for Forensic Facility Dropped
A bill originally intended to codify admissions criteria at Vermont’s first psychiatric facility exclusively for patients committed by a criminal court underwent major revisions over the course of the legislative session. By the time S.192 passed in May, lawmakers and...
Peer Certification Bill Passes
The Vermont General Assembly approved a bill requiring the Office of Professional Regulation to certify peer support providers. It will take effect on July 1, 2025. In 2022, Vermont’s five peer mental health organizations sought to persuade the legislature to enact a...
Brattleboro Facility Will Face Licensing
State inspectors will have to approve a planned “psychiatric residential treatment” program for adolescents at the Brattleboro Retreat before it can begin operations. Rep. Anne Donahue drafted a successful amendment to the legislature’s annual appropriations bill this...
Veterans Support Veterans at VA
Across the country, the US Department of Veterans Affairs has made peer support an integral part of mental healthcare. Vermont is no exception. Nationally, the Veterans Health Administration employs about 1,400 peers. Joshua Gerasimof, a supervisory peer specialist,...
News Briefs
Budget Provides Small Increase for Mental Health The state’s new fiscal year will start on July 1. In its annual appropriations bill, the legislature increased the Medicaid reimbursement rate for Vermont’s community mental health centers by 3%. In January, Gov. Scott...
Psychedelics Bill Becomes a Study
Some researchers say that psychedelic drugs can help people facing mental health challenges. But the Vermont General Assembly wants to find out more before taking any potential action. In January, Sen. Martine Gulick introduced a bill that would have decriminalized...
Counterpoint Articles Archives
Arts and commentary from Counterpoint
Things Are Looking Up
Commentary by Bryan Plant II While my mental health has been a lifelong struggle, the road back began in 2018. A simple routine visit with my doctor was an unintended first step. He asked the simple question, “How are you doing?” Apparently, that was all I needed to...
Murals Brighten Group Homes
Over the past year, the Howard Center Arts Collective has collaborated with residents and staff at four Chittenden County group homes to bring color and imagination to the walls of their common spaces. The Arts Collective hired member-artist Annie Caswell to spearhead...
Readers Support Raising Mental Health Workers’ Wages
All but two Counterpoint readers who responded to the winter issue’s poll expressed a belief that improving mental health workers’ pay would lead to better experiences for mental health consumers. The question aimed to discover psychiatric survivors’ attitudes toward...
Letter: Legislators Should Work Together
Dear Editor, Recently, a Chittenden County Superior court judge handed down a decision siding with the state against the plaintiffs in a case brought by Vermont Legal Aid on behalf of those who are living unhoused and had been evicted from motels during the middle of...
Editorial: ‘Housing First’ Must Mean Housing
Editorial: Housing First Means Housing First Saying that housing is the solution to homelessness is a little like saying that oxygen is the solution to asphyxiation. Both statements are obviously true – though the former hasn’t always been as obvious to some as the...
Letter: New History Misses Mark
To the Editor: The Counterpoint book review of Vermont for the Vermonters in its winter issue captured Mercedes de Guardiola’s effort at pulling back the curtains on the eugenics movement in Vermont. The review observed how the author, Mercedes de Guardiola, exposed...
An Upper Valley Anthropologist Documents ‘Families on the Edge’
In 2009, when Dartmouth professor Elizabeth Carpenter-Song launched what would become a decade-long ethnographic study of homelessness in the Upper Connecticut River Valley, plenty of its residents, by her account, didn’t know that a homeless population existed in the...
An Unusual Sort of Nervous Breakdown
Short fiction by Ron Merkin “Sorry, Samantha, I’m calling because I can’t be at our board meeting this Tuesday. I made an appointment to have a nervous breakdown that day.” There was silence. Then, “You made… an appointment… to have a… nervous breakdown?” “Yes, with a...
In ‘Airswimming,’ Psychiatric Incarceration Feels Like It’ll Last Forever, and Then It Does
“It’s not the Dorchester, is it?” says one inmate at an English “hospital for the criminally insane” to a newer patient, referring sarcastically to the famous five-star hotel in London. “Although most of our guests stay for much longer,” she adds. “It’s the...
Music Raises Funds for Suicide Prevention
“Music is good for your mental health.” That’s what the lead singer of the sextet Cozy told the crowd that had gathered at Hard’ack Recreation Area in St. Albans for the festival known as Afterglow. It was early afternoon on a sunny fall Saturday, and as attendees...