Strengths Based Radio: Recent Episodes
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Our Objective:
Strengths Based Radio is a source for interviews and reporting about mental health. Our primary goal is to promote recovery and well-being among those affected by mental illness. We hope to do this by presenting conversations about mental health that are encouraging, hopeful, and helpful. We want to emphasize positive developments in mental health treatments and services and to help strengthen recovery for individuals. And finally, we hope to treat mental health as a complex and many-sided subject that deserves careful thought and consideration. Seeking to avoid over-simplification, we will attempt to leave the intricacies that exist intact.
What to expect from our podcasts:
Strengths Based Radio brings you podcasts with interviews and stories about mental health from numerous sources and perspectives. We will interview practitioners, case managers, program directors, certified peer specialists, researchers, and other service providers contributing their energy and ideas to the ongoing process of mental health services. We will also celebrate the strengths of individuals, families, and communities with personal accounts and interviews. We are especially interested in understanding how each individual processes and negotiates his/her/their relationship to mental illness as part of their ongoing experience.
What you can do:
We see mental illness as a fully-integrated part of the spectrum of human experience that brings its own sets of ideas, wisdom, thinking, and feeling. Please join the conversation as we set out to deepen our understanding of mental health and to benefit those living with mental health challenges. Leave comments under posts and contact us through email.
Aurora MacRae-Crerar, Ph.D. recently received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in biology. As a student, Aurora took on a leadership role with the Counselling and Psychological Services Advisory Board (CAPSAB), a student group comprised of
Part 2 of 2: Christopher M. Owens, MA, LPC discusses motivational interviewing (MI). MI is widely used as a person-centered approach to counselling people who are contemplating making a change in their lives. Chris is currently a state-wide trainer, providing continuing education workshops to behavioral healthcare practitioners. Prior to this position, he was a program director for an outpatient drug and alcohol program. Chris has worked in the field in various settings, including family-based services, inpatient and outpatient drug and alcohol, and health education. His professional passions lie in recovery philosophy, stages of change, motivational interviewing, engagement, group dynamics, DSM-V, and effective supervision. Aside from his current career interests, Chris also has past experience as an amateur stand-up comic, improv artist, emcee, disc jockey, and radio talk show host. One of Chris’ primary goals in delivering courses is to blend his professional expertise with his entertainment skills to keep participants actively engaged during the learning process. … Read more
Part 1 of 2: Christopher M. Owens, MA, LPC discusses personality disorders and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Chris is currently a state-wide trainer, providing continuing education workshops to behavioral healthcare practitioners. Prior to this position, he was a program director for an outpatient drug and alcohol program. Chris has worked in the field in various settings, including family-based services, inpatient and outpatient drug and alcohol, and health education. His professional passions lie in recovery philosophy, stages of change, motivational interviewing, engagement, group dynamics, DSM-5, and effective supervision. Aside from his current career interests, Chris also has past experience as an amateur stand-up comic, improv artist, emcee, disc jockey, and radio talk show host. One of Chris’ primary goals in delivering courses is to blend his professional expertise with his entertainment skills to keep participants actively engaged during the learning process. … Read more
Lauren Fisher Forsythe is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist working in the Denver, Colorado public school system. Lauren, who serves as a psychologist in an elementary school, discusses creating a supportive and safe environment where children can express their feelings and grow emotionally. She talks about the greater effort in early childhood education to encourage kids to talk about their feelings as part of a culture shift towards more free and open social dynamics in schools. Lauren also discusses some of the mental health and behavioral challenges that kids can face and the relationships she has developed with kids and parents as they move through the school’s supportive process. … Read more
Luke Gorman works in operations at Genomind, a company that seeks to bring personalized medicine to psychiatry by way of genetic testing. Luke, a person in recovery and an advocate for collegiate recovery who has accepted an invitation to represent young people in recovery at the White House, shares that genetic screenings have already begun to change psychiatry for the better. He states that Genomind, through identifying certain characteristics of an individual’s genetic code, can help bypass the difficult process of trial and error that has historically left so many patients frustrated and discouraged as they deal with ineffective medications and disruptive side effects. Luke is highly knowledgeable and passionate about his work, and we are thrilled to have him on Strengths Based Radio.
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Paul M. Grant, Ph.D., is a Research Assistant Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry in the Aaron T. Beck Psychopathology Research Center in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Grant has been working for the past 15 years on recovery-oriented cognitive therapy for those living with the symptoms of schizophrenia. (Photo not available) … Read more
Interviewer: Josh Kurz Birchard Dr. Sarah Noble is a psychiatrist at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, PA. Sarah received her doctorate in osteopathic medicine from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. She is interested in women’s mental health, particularly postpartum depression and depression during pregnancy. She has taught throughout the Philadelphia area about the delicate process of medication management during pregnancy and lactation. She uses a combination of interpersonal and cognitive behavioral therapy to address the struggles that new moms can have adjusting to parenting in the face of a mental health crisis. … Read more
Interviewer: Josh Kurz Birchard Sarah Gawricki is an activist, reiki master practitioner, writer, and a social worker for the city of Philadelphia. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Old Dominion University with a Bachelor’s in Psychology. She has worked with many populations throughout her career including the elderly, survivors of domestic violence, those with intellectual disabilities, the homeless population, those struggling with addiction, and those coping with severe mental illness. Sarah is an outspoken feminist and wants to focus her career on helping women achieve stable independence, a safe environment, and a healthy sense of self. … Read more
Interviewer: Josh Kurz Birchard Mr. Onzie Travis is well-versed in transformational, trauma-informed, person-first and recovery-based approaches to behavioral health. As a trainer for Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) facilitators and as a trainer for Certified Peer Specialists, Mr. Travis passes on lessons in recovery that are now at the forefront of evidence-based practices for those seeking to make progress in living with and overcoming behavioral health challenges. Mr. Travis has been very active in Philadelphia’s recovery community, where behavioral health services have undergone major expansions and transformations over the past several decades. He talks about some of these transformations, as well as his experiences with person-first, recovery-based approaches, in the following interview. … Read more