NYAPRS Note: We continue to push for more community alternatives to hospitalization for every region throughout the state. This includes bringing Clubhouse programs back to upstate New York. This request orginated from Western NY community members who attended our regional forum in Buffalo. These programs, which prioritize choice in recovery and build agency, can serve as a place for many people with major mental health challenges to go to build skills, socialize, and connect to other desired services. The Buffalo News recently published an editorial by NYAPRS CEO Harvey Rosenthal in which he describes his experience with Clubhouse, the past successes of WNY Clubhouses, and the community’s desire to bring these programs back upstate. Please see below for more information.
Another Voice: Bring Mental Health Rehabilitation Centers back to Buffalo
By Harvey Rosenthal | The Buffalo News | April 13, 2023
I spent six weeks in a psychiatric hospital in 1970. I hadn’t slept or eaten in many days, had isolated myself for many more, and was increasingly suspicious of others. The medication and “therapy” groups left me empty and gave me little reason for hope. I thought my life as I knew it was lost forever.
Once I was in recovery, determined to help others like me, I got work at an Albany-based state hospital and clinic. Those programs focused on an expectation of lifelong relapse, rehospitalizations and permanent disability.
I was very fortunate to be asked to be the director of a clubhouse program and confirmed there what I knew to be true: people could recover, work and reconnect to a community of their choice. Based on the internationally acclaimed Fountain House model, clubhouses offered lifechanging opportunities to people who have struggled through regular cycles of relapse and admission, homelessness, incarceration and food insecurity.
They offered people who have all too often been idle and isolated a connection to a vibrant community of support that helped club “members” to reclaim a sense of worth, purpose and dignity.
They offered members powerful and personalized opportunities to reintegrate into their communities via job and school readiness, health and wellness programs and access to the transformative power of peer support.
And there were no barriers to immediately join this community: we didn’t put people through a complicated referral process that focused on forms and past histories. Anyone with a psychiatric disability could come to the club and could stay for life if desired. Our goal was to make members feel “welcome, wanted and needed.”
By the mid 1980’s, there were upwards of 35 clubhouse programs located in every corner of the state. I had the opportunity to visit most of those and found Restoration Society’s clubhouse programs in Buffalo among the very best to be found.
RSI clubhouses served as a beacon of hope to thousands of people diagnosed with major mental health, addiction and trauma related challenges – people who would otherwise “fall through the cracks” of Western New York’s community mental health system. At one point, the agency successfully operated five Clubhouse model programs. One operated in downtown Buffalo and successfully supported approximately 1,300 members annually, serving up to 90 members per day.
Nonetheless, clubhouse programs lost the interest of the Office of Mental Health in the late 2000’s and, one by one, were forced to close to make way for a new Medicaid rehabilitation model, leaving a huge hole in local community mental health systems across the state ever since.
People no longer have a place to go and a family to belong to that could serve as a bridge to the broader mainstream community. They don’t have a place to practice vocational and social skills to advance their recovery and community integration.
At the same time, New York City has not only continued to fund their clubhouses, they are set to triple their capacity this year at the direction of Mayor Adams.
We are appealing to the Legislature to take advantage of advances of the past decade to bring revitalized clubhouses back to upstate New York, starting with Buffalo.
Harvey Rosenthal is CEO, New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services.