Reintegration Reads: January 2016

Each month, the Center for Reintegration will pick a book that touches upon mental health and give a brief review of it on our blog. Read along with us as we enjoy memoirs, research findings, biographies, novels, and academic texts as they relate to mental well-being and reintegration for all. If you have any suggestions, please email us at reintegration@reintegration.com. 

Happy 2016 to our Reintegration community! For our January book pick this month we are reading Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin. This book looks at how we as humans develop habits; and what we can do to make them stick. It begins in a unique way to other texts that discuss habit formation; it begins by assisting the reader gain self-knowledge as to how they individually respond to expectations. The rest of the book provides strategies to help form good habits, tricks to detect when we are tempted to stop a good habit (or begin a bad one), and methods of defining ourselves by what we do everyday. It is an insightful read, and perfect for the start of the new year. Enjoy! 

Reintegration Reads Hiatus: December 2015

We are taking a brief pause on Reintegration Reads this month, due to the business of the holiday season, and our students having final exams. Good luck to all of those finishing the fall semester, and check back in early January for the next Reintegration Reads book!

Happy Holidays! 

Reintegration Reads: November 2015

Each month, the Center for Reintegration will pick a book that touches upon mental health and give a brief review of it on our blog. Read along with us as we enjoy memoirs, research findings, biographies, novels, and academic texts as they relate to mental well-being and reintegration for all. If you have any suggestions, please email us at reintegration@reintegration.com 

For the month of November, we are going to be reading Fountain House: Creating Community in Mental Health Practice by Alan Doyle, Julius Lanoil, and Kenneth Dudek. This book explains the importance of community to the recovery of individuals living with mental illness.  

Fountain House is a clubhouse located in New York City,  a working community designed to help individuals living with mental illness regain confidence, learn skills, find a sense of belonging, and move towards achieving goals such as steady employment, affordable housing, an education, healthy lifestyles, and finding friends and colleagues. Those who decide to join a clubhouse become members, and together with trained staff workers, members are responsible for the everyday running of the clubhouse. This book explains how this model works, backed by psychiatry and strengths-based social work.

There are now over 300 clubhouses throughout the world, Fountain House being the first, and the majority of them are found in the United States. To learn more about the clubhouse model, visit our Resources page. 

Important Article in The Week

• CLICK HERE to read a compelling argument as to why it is so important to  have a strong mental health program at every university's campus, written this past October 15th by Kimberly Alters of The Week. As many of us know, the majority of mental health issues arise between the ages of 14 and 25, directly correlating to when pressures on students, academic, social, emotional, and financial, tend to increase as well. The stigma of mental illness on college campuses is a major issue that all educational institutions must work harder at combating, along with supporting those students who need help.