Nicole Walters-De-institutionalization: Changing perceptions of mental disorders

DAS stands for diversion acute stabilization, this means that kids that come to MHY's placement facility are usually coming from a traumatic high and were either taken to the police station or the hospital. They are now coming to MHY because they need to be stabilized on their meds while entering them back into a normal routine setting. When you are dealing with a child who has high escalation tendencies you have to keep them busy, practically all day. Some of the kids on the DAS units had ADHD or ADD diagnosis, but even the ones that weren't diagnosed were very high energy children. The day started out two different ways during my internship period, while it was the summer, the kids attended summer school for five hours. There is Longmore academy, a special school on MHY's campus where the teachers are trained to help best with the children's particular behavior issues. The academy is located close to the units, allowing the staff to walk the kids to the school inste...

TCI stands for therapeutic crisis intervention and is the training that every MHY employee must be cleared on to work on the units and to be alone with the children. During NEO, the TCI training was a full week long because it is a very in-depth training experience. TCI involves physical restraints and verbal de-escalation, both of which I used throughout my internship. The children that come to MHY have a lot of mental and behavioral issues and so part of our job is protecting the kids from themselves and well as protecting ourselves while around them. More often the TCI physical restraints were used to stop the children from hurting themselves, sometimes it is from moments when the child is trying to cut themself or bang their head against glass. When the restraints are used because a staff member has to protect themself it is often because the child has an aggressive tendency and failed to regulate their emotion and turned to hurt the closest person, which will always be a staff me...

The Ins and outs of MHY Mars Home for Youth was opened in 1878 by a group of women coming from the Presbyterian churches in Pittsburgh and Allegheny, now Pittsburgh’s north side. They first opened MHY with all volunteers to help serve families suffering from death or poverty and struggled to take care of their children. Very quickly MHY was known as “The Home” and was taking care of an average of 75 children on its campus. Over the years from 1929 to 2014 MHY has evolved to the needs and demands of the children in their community. Now MHY receives accreditation from COA making the facility well-known for its excellence in human services. On the MHY campus today there is the administrative building where all the office workers like HR and the nurse’s offices are. In this building, there is also storage where most of the donations are held. MHY receives thousands of donations a year and it allows them to give each child their own bedding set, pillow, wash clothes and towels,...

Hello, For the summer of 2018, I completed an internship at MHY family services, this stands for Mars Home For Youth and is an placement facility that takes in kids for both short and long-term stays in order to help them deal with mental and behavioral issues. I will go into more detail on this institution and what I have learned from working there over the summer in another post. For the rest of this, I would like to explain why I chose this organization and how MHY's work is connected to me and my Magellan from last summer. Last summer I shadowed several mental health professionals at UPMC Children's mental health office in Wexford. I got to sit in on several doctors, therapists, counselors, treatment visits with their patients, and I got to watch therapeutic practices I had been learning about in school. It was an amazing experience and if you would like more details please refer to my other blog posts from 2017.  After completing this past Magellan, I knew I...