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Cuddeback receives Office of the Provost Engaged Scholarship Award Gary Cuddeback, PhD, MSW, MPH, director of the Center’s Community Outcomes Research and Evaluation Center, also associate professor in the UNC School of Social Work and adjunct professor in psychiatry, received a 2017 Office of the Provost Engaged Scholarship Award for...

Karen Lamont, vice president, Kalos Golf in Chapel Hill, golf tour operator offering golf cruises and private jet tours around the world, recently joined the Center’s advisory board. Karen and her husband Jim moved to North Carolina in 1983; they have three children, one of whom has special needs and...

  Emily Clark Kristin Lukasiewicz Typically, Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams provide 24/7 community-based care to individuals with severe mental illness. For the second year, the Center’s two ACT teams also provided shadowing training for other ACT providers and administrators. Shadowing provides an up close and personal look at professionals...

  Mental wellness and recovery go well beyond medications and therapy; as with housing, employment is a critical part of many individuals’ recovery plans. This year’s successful 24th Annual STEP (Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program) Symposium featured the evidence-based Individual Placement and Support (IPS) supported employment-training model and included a...

  Thava Mahadevan Beth Rossi The UNC Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health has received a three-year accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF), an independent, nonprofit accreditor of health and human services including behavioral medicine. The accreditation is under UNC Behavioral Health Community Access and...

  We have had a very busy and exciting spring. We recently received our three-year accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF), following an extensive survey of our programs. Thanks to Beth Rossi and Thava Mahadevan for their leadership in accomplishing this very important goal. Our UNC...

UNC PAWS is a Personal Support Dog program that provides therapeutic benefit to clients of the UNC Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health. The program rescues dogs from local shelters and works with a nonprofit that supervises inmates who train the dogs to become emotional support animals. Earlier this...

We have had an exciting year at the Center. We continue to navigate the ever-changing mental health system to help individuals with serious mental illness in our local communities and to train mental health professionals around the State. Take a look at our recent accomplishments.

UNC PAWS, a dog-training therapy program that helps clients with mental health disorders, might be suspended unless their fundraising campaign is successful.

“What we’re doing with them comes from what they tell us they want,” VanderZwaag said. “The idea is that initially we try to help them identify what are the things they value, what are their goals for the next year and then longer term, and then we try to help...

Alliance Behavioral Healthcare and the UNC Wake ACTT Primary Care Integration program received a Programs of Excellence Award for care integration.

"Thanks to this donation, we plan to create a case management team consisting of a full-time, masters-level clinical social worker, and a half-time peer support specialist," said John H. Gilmore, MD, the center's director. "This team will be focused on providing individuals and their families with the resources and support...