Welcome to the CASRA Newsletter

In this issue:

- Structural Competency and Psychiatry

-A sense of urgency for Mental Health in the Workplace

-In disaster areas, Psychological First Aid treats unseen wounds

-An app that connects farmworkers to doctors in Mexico

Enjoy!

If you have news you would like to share or a colleague you would like to spotlight because of the great work they do or just because they are a great person or both, let us know by contacting joe@casra.org.

CASRA is a statewide organization of private, not-for-profit, public benefit corporations that serve clients of the California public mental health system.

Member agencies provide a variety of services that are designed to enhance the quality of life and community participation of youth, adults and older adults living with challenging mental health issues. Read more

Our member agencies are continually looking for new employees or volunteers to join their workforce.

To see current openings and find out additional information about CASRA Member Agencies, please click below.

A benefit of membership in CASRA is receiving four hours of training for your staff. For more information, please contact joe@casra.org

If you are a CASRA member agency and would like to advertise your learning opportunity, training or event for the benefit of other CASRA member agencies, please contact us at events@casra.org.
There are a few guidelines:
-You are a CASRA Member Agency
-Your event is free of charge
and, as a reminder the Newsletter is published on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of the month

CASRA facilitates a number of support groups for people working at CASRA member agencies. The support groups provide people working in similar roles opportunities to share experiences, information, and challenges. They meet monthly for approximantely one hour. for more information contact the person listed for each group.

Social Rehabilitation Facilities (SRF)
Meets: First Tuesday of the month at 1 PM

Human Resources
Meets: First Thursday of the month at 11 AM

EmploymentVocational Rehabilitation Services
Meets: First Thursday of the month at 3 PM

For information regarding any of the above groups contact:
Chad Costello, chad@casra.org

Wellness Services (Well Talk)
The Wellness Services support group is now online. For more info contact Joe Ruiz, joe@casra.org

The California Association of Social Rehabilitation Agencies

Mailing Address:
3350 E. 7th Street, #509
Long Beach, CA 90804

Email: casra@casra.org

Phone: (562) 343-2621

To reach us: use our Contact Form

Beyond Structural Competency: A Call for Mad Liberation

From madinamerica.com
By Ashley Bobak, PsyD, January 27, 2025

Structural competency, which calls attention to systemic issues like racism, violence, and poverty, is necessary in addressing societal injustices but falls short in its critiques of psychiatry. A new chapter published in Mad Studies Reader: Interdisciplinary Innovations in Mental Health argues that structural competency does not challenge traditional understandings of “mental illness.”
The author, a psychosis researcher with lived experience, Nev Jones of the University of Pittsburgh, writes:

“. . . a major form of structural oppression is in fact reified if social determinants and structural competency writings do not explicitly and visibly interrogative their own role in power-knowledge hierarchies that subordinate those deemed Mad, leave the reduction of madness to pathology unchallenged, and fail to deeply engage with user/survivors and the alternative social identities and “knowledges” they have painstakingly forged. Read More

A New Sense of Urgency for Mental Health in the Workplace

From mindsitenews.org
By Morey Riordan, February 3, 2025

For the majority of my career, I have served as the senior leader of nonprofit organizations, whose missions have focused on improving the health and well-being of communities, especially marginalized communities. I have relished this work.

I am also a transgender person at a time when people like me feel our lives are the bullseye of a culture war. It is sometimes difficult to resist being swept away in anxiety and fear for my community. I am not alone in my feelings of vulnerability, anxiety and in moments anger at the depth and volume of cruelty toward us.

Last year, a sitting member of Congress announced her intention to move forward with legislation mandating that transgender people use bathrooms of their gender assigned at birth. This strategy is explicitly aimed at the lawmaker’s new work colleague, the nation’s first transgender person elected to Congress, Sarah McBride. Read More

In The LA Fires And The NC Floods, 'CPR For Mental Health' Treats Unseen Wounds

From npr.org
by Katia Riddle, February 2, 2025

Survivors of the floods of Hurricane Helene and the wildfires of Los Angeles have something in common: help from frontline workers trained in something called Psychological First Aid.

It's a mental health intervention designed to address a therapeutic deficit exposed by other terrible events — like the bombing of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Nineteen children were among the 168 people who died that day in 1995. It is still the deadliest act of domestic terrorism.

Robin Gurwitch was a young psychologist in Oklahoma City at the time, and she soon found herself dealing with the aftermath. Her clients were the people who survived. Read More

App Helps California Farmworkers Visit With Mexican Doctors

From sfchronicle.com
By Victoria Clayton, January 31, 2025

This coastal valley made famous by the novelist John Steinbeck is sometimes known affectionately as “America’s salad bowl,” though the planting and harvesting is done mostly by immigrants from Mexico.

For Taylor Farms, a major global purveyor of packaged salads and cut vegetables, that’s made it a logical place to pioneer a novel type of health care for its workforce, one that could have broad utility in the smartphone era: cross-border medical consultations through an app.

The company is among the first customers of a startup called MiSalud, which connects Spanish-speaking Taylor Farms employees to physicians and mental health therapists in Mexico. Providers aren’t licensed in the U.S. and can’t prescribe medications but instead serve as health coaches who can dispense advice and work with a U.S.-based doctor if needed. Read More

If you or someone you know is considering suicide or self-harm, there are resources available to provide free and confidential support. Call 988 or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or Teen Line at 1-800-TLC-TEEN or The Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386 for LGBTQ young people.

“Keep your eye on the doughnut, not on the hole.”

David Lynch