News stories from Counterpoint
ED Looks To Increase Advocacy
Story by Anne Donahue RUTLAND – Walt Wade, a longtime advocate for youth and those with addictions who joined Vermont Psychiatric Survivors in 2020, has been named its new Executive Director. He said his vision is “making VPS the agency that it should be” that...
Youth Inpatient Unit Is Funded
BENNINGTON – The state legislature budgeted $9.225 million in fiscal year 2024 for the construction of an adolescent psychiatric inpatient unit at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, indicating its approval of the project. The Department of Mental Health told...
Forensic Unit Gets Green Light
MONTPELIER – A years-long legislative effort to create a separate forensic mental health system culminated in the passage of a law that will, by next summer, turn the four and five-bed units of the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital into a locked “therapeutic community...
Commission Finds No Fault by Police in Killing; Advocates Assert Report Erred
Report by Anne Donahue The commission charged with analyzing police shootings when a mental health issue is involved has reported that officers acted appropriately – or even were deserving of praise – when they confronted Mark Johnson in June of 2019 and attempted to...
News Briefs
$18 Million from Hospital To Be Shifted MONTPELIER – An $18 million fund left over after construction of new inpatient psychiatric beds by the University of Vermont Health Network was determined to be too costly will now be spent on a broader range of services. UVMHN...
Clients Face Loss of Payee Services
BURLINGTON – Howard Center, the agency serving people with mental health diagnoses and developmental disabilities in Chittenden County, will cease to offer representative payee services as of July 1, leaving clients in a financial pinch. A representative payee is a...
Counterpoint Articles Archives
Arts and commentary from Counterpoint
What Is Mental Health?
Creative writing by Raven CrispinoWhat is mental health? What is men-tal-hell-th Wat-iz-men-tall-hell-thhh Anyway, That is what my mind just told me to do. So I did it. I am feeling better today; more in control. Better than a month ago; a week ago. Yesterday was OK....
Three Poems
Poetry by Wim Alden Weary from the dayI take to my roomWith nothing left to fight but demons * * * I want distance from my head spaceFor it causes me troubleAnd sets me to worrying.My heart, on the other hand,Is warm and pulses with good intentions * * * Open though...
Longtime Windsor County Poet Becomes First-Time Author
In November, the Cape Cod-based publisher Wrinkled Sea Press released Sidelong Glances, the debut poetry collection by prolific Counterpoint contributor Dennis Rivard. The volume’s unusual journey to publication began with a poem printed in a high school yearbook half...
Mental Health Consumers Raise Voices on Advocacy Day
Vermonters delivered the following testimonies, among others, before legislators, nonprofit leaders, clinicians, and peers at Mental Health Advocacy Day, whose four-hour schedule concluded with a story-sharing session on Jan. 31. The annual event, normally held at the...
Four Poems
Poetry by Wim Alden (Woodstock, VT) A more developed thoughtI cannot bearFather leads the wayWith hardly a sideways glanceBrother trudges onKeeping up, forging a duplicate trailI sink, I swimIt depends upon the day. *** My therapeutic home is adequateI have a bedThere...
Walking Through Depression
Prose by Amanda Perry (North Hartland, VT) I walk through a darkened path only large enough for me to fit through. I move side to side, I feel the rough bark of the trees next to me. Turning my head toward the sky I see nothing but darkness. The trees are so dense and...
Editorial: All Politics Are the Politics of Mental Health
January marked the five-year anniversary of the suicide of the British critic and theorist Mark Fisher, whose short book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? has, since its publication in 2009, become a classic of contemporary left-wing political philosophy....
Homelessness and Resulting Trauma
Commentary by Morgan W. Brown Although I have been housed for nearly twelve and a half years now, all these years later I have still felt the effects of severe trauma from having previously lived unhoused (aka homeless). Some people don't seem to realize or understand...
‘Medicating Normal’ Sounds Another Warning on Psychiatric Drugs
More than a decade has passed since the journalist Robert Whitaker authored the controversial exposé Anatomy of an Epidemic, which gathered reams of evidence in support of a central claim that psychiatric medication has hurt far more people than it has helped....
Coercion in Survival Benefits
At this year’s Alternatives conference in Washington, Calvin Moen, Kaz DeWolfe and I gave a presentation on the elements of psychiatric coercion that members of our community face in accessing survival benefits.
This was an effort on our part to broaden the scope of discussions that occur in the consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement to consider coercion more broadly.
All the people who attended our workshop were recipients of survival benefits and had a great deal to contribute to the discussion. They spoke to the precarious nature of life on benefits, as well as to the degree to which participation in the benefits system limits their ability to determine the conditions of their care.