News stories from Counterpoint
Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hosts Disability Advocates
On May 22, four advocates for people with disabilities, including one with a psychiatric disability, shared their perspectives with state commissioners tasked with “dismantling institutional, structural, and systemic discrimination” in Vermont. Members of the public...
State Renames ‘Behavioral Health Clinics’
The Vermont Department of Mental Health made good on a promise to replace the term “Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic” this spring. DMH had inherited the nomenclature from a federal program at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration....
In the News
• Alyssum, Vermont’s only peer respite, began its search for a new leader to replace founding director Gloria van den Berg. An ad for the Rochester-based position appeared in January, calling for someone with “lived mental health experience” and the ability to work...
Judge Advises Limiting Competency Restoration
In Montpelier, Judge Steven Leifman of Florida keynoted what the Vermont Judiciary Commission on Mental Health and the Courts called its first annual summit. Leifman’s speech described how Miami-Dade County’s decision to prioritize mental health treatment for...
Peers Meet Montpelierites in Crisis
For several years, Vermont’s hospitals have reported increases in emergency department visits for mental health. Downtown Montpelier has a new option for people in distress who need help immediately. At Washington County Mental Health Services’ Access Hub, that help...
Clients Celebrate Direct Support Professionals
Vermont Care Partners, Green Mountain Self-Advocates, and the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council gathered on the State House lawn to honor Vermont’s direct support professionals on Sept. 12. DSPs assist people with developmental, intellectual, and psychiatric...
Counterpoint Articles Archives
Arts and commentary from Counterpoint
We May Be An ‘Anxious Nation,’ But Why?
What causes anxiety? What can those who experience it intensely and persistently do to ease their burden? Anxious Nation, a documentary that played in five theaters across the state this fall in a series of special events organized by NAMI-VT, proposes the same answer...
Arts Collective Stays Busy
The Howard Center Arts Collective kept busy in the second half of 2023, starting with a show at the Flynndog Gallery that ran from August through September. Sponsored by Chittenden County’s community mental health center, the Arts Collective, by its own description,...
A ‘Vermont for the Vermonters’ Wasn’t for Everybody
Eugenics – the pseudoscience that promotes selective human breeding through policies like sterilization, marriage restriction, and family separation – became a nationwide movement in the first half of the 20th century. In Vermont, the particular concerns and...
Editorial: Burnout Is Real, But the Solutions Aren’t
The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases recognized “burn-out” in 2019 as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” A year later, as frontline workers scrambled to...
Forced Hospitalization Leaves a Mark
Commentary by Laura Shanks “Say what you want, it is a jail. Am I locked up? Yes. Are their guards? Yes. Can I leave? No.” “I think the whole system is a mess. No one has explained anything to me.” “I just feel very controlled. If I had been given the option to leave...
Winter Poems
"Time's practical joke, miss me please?" by Geoffrey L. McLam, St. Albans Serene happinessgarnered not withoutthe gentle caringthat goes along withconsidering one's self Feeling follyat the possibility of dying20 years before i potentiallycould. That's 20, twenty...
Artist Finds More Than One Way to Draw a Cat
At scaredycatart.com, Burlington-based artist Sarah Brunkhorst sells prints and stickers at prices starting as low as $2. Her bright, often humorous digital illustrations, by her own description, contain “a lot of visual gags” while also touching on “subtle social...
Voices from Mad Pride 2023
Journalist Robert Whitaker and nonprofit director Sera Davidow traveled to Burlington in July for Vermont Mad Pride, where they served as the keynote speakers. Whitaker, the bestselling author of Anatomy of an Epidemic and the founder of the website Mad In America,...
How ‘America’s Got Talent’ Became a Psychological Catastrophe
Short fiction by Ron Merkin While walking on stage, John reminded himself not to tell the audience any of his stupid jokes. Then, as he stood in front of 4,000 people, in reply to one judge’s “Are you nervous?” – the most frequently asked question before America’s Got...
Readers Say No to Emergency Department Arrests
Twenty-two of 24 respondents (91.7%) voted no on the summer Counterpoint poll: “If you threaten emergency department staff while in a mental health crisis, should you be arrested for a crime?” The question related to legislation introduced in Montpelier in January...