On June 27, 2018, WKSU presented a Mental Health Fair and Forum at the Akron-Summit County Public Library. Here is more information on the Forum Panel, series sponsors and organizations participating in the Fair.
FORUM GUESTS:
Jerry Craig is the executive director of the County of Summit Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board and chairs the Summit County Opiate Task Force. He received his undergraduate degree in social work from the University of Akron and his masters from Cast Western Reserve University with a focus on mental health administration. He has been with the ADM board since May 2008, serving as manager of clinical services until his appointment to executive director in June 2010. Before joining the board, he was associate director at Community Support Services, an organization providing services and supports to people with serious mental illnesses and co-occurring addictions.
Summit ADM Board Help Hotline: 330-434-9144
Lt. Michael S. Woody, president of the board of CIT International, serves as the law enforcement liaison to the Ohio Criminal Justice Coordinating Center of Excellence. He retired from the Akron Police Department after 25 years, where he spent the last four as director of training (a good fit since in his previous life he was a high school teacher).
Lt. Woody is credited with helping start the first CIT program in Ohio in 2000, and as the state of Ohio CIT coordinator helped spread CIT to almost every county in Ohio. He also helped organize the first CIT national conference, in Columbus, Ohio in 2005. This led to the birth of the CIT National (now CIT International) Organization. He was elected the first president of CIT National/International and currently holds this position.
Lt. Woody also currently sits on an Ohio Attorney General’s Task Force that is looking at the way the criminal justice system interacts with the mentally ill. He chairs the Police Training subcommittee of the task force to ensure all Ohio’s police officers get more training in how to deal with the mentally ill in crisis.
He was an adviser to President Bush's Commission on Mental Health and his awards include the Major Sam Cochran Compassion in Law Enforcement National Award, the Summit County MHA Heart of Gold Award, the Ohio Dept of Mental Health Forensic Leadership Award, the NAMI Summit County Heroes Make a Difference Award, and the Summit County ADM Board Trailblazer Award.
Diane Mang is the outreach coordinator for NAMI Stark County and was a member of the Ohio Community Recovery Support Planning Council through OhioMHAS. Although she had exhibited signs of mental illness in childhood, she did not receive a diagnosis of Bipolar I Disorder with Psychotic Features and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder until the age of 19.
After nearly 20 hospitalizations over the years, two suicide attempts, several different psychiatrists, and being tried on more than 20 medications in an exponential number of combinations; she found NAMI in 2006 through a flyer she found during her final hospitalization.
She has been volunteering and working for NAMI Stark County since that time. She attributes her current wellness to helping other peers, to 10 years of therapy, and to the right combination of medications. She considers herself more than just a “survivor;” rather, a “thriver” working on her recovery process daily.
www.nami.org for helpful information, fact sheets, and links to local NAMI affiliates
www.namistarkcounty.org for a listing of various support groups and classes in Stark County
http://wksu.org/term/diane-mang#stream/0 to hear more of Diane Mang’s story
Dr. Charlie Brown, Inpatient Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Services, is an Indiana native who graduated from Indiana State University with a bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences. He went to medical school at Ohio University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine. He completed his residency training in Adult Psychiatry at Akron General Medical Center and completed a fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. He remains inspired by the resilience of the children and families he serves.
Akron Children’s cares for more than 1,000 children and teens in its inpatient behavioral health unit each year. An expansion in January 2017 allowed the hospital to treat an additional 500 patients in 2017, with plans to increase to 750 patients by 2020 for a total of 1,750 annually.
Sara Dugan, Pharm. D., is an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice with the College of Pharmacy and with the Department of Psychiatry with the College of Medicine at Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED). She is board certified in Psychiatric Pharmacy and Pharmacotherapy by the Board of Pharmacy Specialties and is an active member of a number of state and national organizations including the Ohio Pharmacists Association and the College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacists. Dr. Dugan provides consultation as the clinical pharmacist for the Integrated Care Technical Assistance and Consultation Team (TACT) and the Best Practices in the Treatment of Schizophrenia Center on four of their Project ECHO clinics: Schizophrenia Consult, Integrated Care at NEOMED (IC@N) for pediatric and adolescent patients, Medication Assisted Treatment Mentor ECHO and Medication Assisted Treatment Continuing Education ECHO. Her academic responsibilities at NEOMED include lecturing in the neuro-psychiatry module of Pharmacotherapeutics and Practice of Pharmacy III and she serves as chair of the College of Pharmacy Curriculum Committee.
THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:
Coleman Professional Services: http://www.colemanservices.org/
Direction Home Akron Canton: http://www.dhad.org/
MENTAL HEALTH FAIR ORGANIZATIONS:
Akron-Summit County Public Library
Child Guidance & Family Solutions
