News stories from Counterpoint
New Staff Announced
RUTLAND – Vermont Psychiatric Survivors has announced the start of two new peer outreach staff. Mariah Sullivan Mariah Sullivan has joined VPS as a patient representative for southern Vermont. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in...
VPS Reviews Challenges, Efforts Supporting Peers
RUTLAND – In its first in-person annual membership meeting since the COVID pandemic, Vermont Psychiatric Survivor’s Executive Director, Karim Chapman, told the staff and board members present not to be discouraged by the small turnout. “There is some great work...
Counterpoint Online Poll
QUESTION: Does Vermont need a forensic psychiatric hospital? A forensic psychiatric hospital would house and treat criminal defendants who’ve been adjudicated incompetent to stand trial or found not guilty by reason of insanity. Vermont does not currently have...
Northwestern Medical Center Refines Psychiatric Subunit Plans
In St. Albans, the pandemic-delayed plan by Northwestern Medical Center (NMC) to build a new emergency department, announced in 2019, remains underway. One component of the process, mandated by the Green Mountain Care Board as a condition of the project’s Certificate...
Forensic Care Working Group at Loggerheads
After receiving an extension on a pair of reports owed to the state legislature earlier this year, the Vermont Department of Mental Health (DMH) offered an update in July to the General Assembly’s Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee on the progress – or lack...
Self-Neglect Cases on the Rise
The annual number of referrals for self-neglect received by Adult Protective Services (APS), a subdivision of the Vermont Department of Disabilities, Aging, and Independent Living (DAIL), increased by 50% between 2017 and 2021. The major jump occurred in 2020, when...
Counterpoint Articles Archives
Arts and commentary from Counterpoint
She Always Comes Home
Short fiction by Ron Merkin, Montpelier The Jaltsens lived in New Jersey. Walking through Manhattan after a concert we attended with them one night, my husband asked if they'd be taking the George Washington Bridge home. “Oh, no!” Alice responded. “It'd be much too...
Voices from Mad Pride
The bandshell at Burlington’s Battery Park hosted speakers from across the state on Mad Pride Day. Excerpts follow. Chris Hansen, Burlington My chief qualification for being here is my own history of being seen as mad enough to lock up at a significant time in my...
Editorial: New Week, New Ideas
How should psychiatric survivors and ex-patients interact with mainstream progressive demands for a fully funded mental health system? On July 31, the popular HBO show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver aired a 25-minute video essay about mental healthcare in the...
Fall Poems
Reflection Lakeby Raven Joy Crispino, RutlandYou came to me in a fragmentLess than a sentence drew meIntrigued, I opened the door to a worldThat could hold our weightIn pain, in laughter, in heart-hardening silence. I promised to cry less… Was told I saved you from...
Eleven Years of Being Peers
Essay by Linda Fuglestad This year, 2022, Alyssum quietly, but proudly, celebrates 11 years of being here in Vermont as the first peer-hosted alternative holistic crisis intervention and respite! In doing this work, we have been happy to celebrate our ongoing...
Crazy or Not, Here I Come
Essay by Phoebe Sparrow Wagner I used to be “crazy.” Labeled CMI, chronically mentally ill, prone to psychosis, I was a revolving-door mental patient, one who spent almost as much time in her adult life in the hospital as out of it. Although I had various diagnoses,...
Mental Health and Cycling
Essay by Tanawat Luekr-u-suke Riding my bike and walking have always been a way for me to clear my thoughts and improve my attitude. Over time, long walks and bike rides became meditation sessions for me, allowing me to boost my mental health simply by making time to...
Editorial: Who Decides if the News Is ‘Bad’?
In April, the Burlington-based alt-weekly Seven Days published the following headline: “UVM Health Network Halts Badly Needed Psychiatric Bed Project.” The article was a news story, not a commentary, about an announcement by the University of Vermont Health Network...
How Radical Psychiatrists Pursued ‘Disalienation’ in a French Hospital
A libertarian Marxist refugee from the fascist regime that won the Spanish Civil War, Dr. Francois Tosquelles, a Catalan, arrived in France less than a year before the German invasion. Following a months-long internment at the Septfonds concentration camp, his release...
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....