Dr. Michael A. Lindsey is the Director of the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research and McSilver Professor of Poverty Studies at NYU Silver School of Social Work. Today, we discussed mental health, the challenges for our society and younger demographic. Dr. Lindsey shares the best first step to healing ourselves from a mental health issue, along with some necessary self-care practices we can incorporate right now.

Questions I asked Michael:

• At what point growing up did you develop an awareness and a desire to study social work and to look more cloely at mental health as an area of focus?
• What are the benefits of attending a historal black colleges or universities?
• Could you explain to our Blazer Nation around the world what you are referring to when you use term “mental health”?
• Why is it hard to for people to seek help?
• What is the best first step to healing ourselves from a mental healh issue?
• What are a few self-care practices we can incorporate right now to help us improve our mental health?

Connect with Michael:

• Website: mcsilver.nyu.edu
• Twitter: @DrMikeLindsey @NYUMcSilver

Michael's Bio:

Dr. Michael A. Lindsey became Director of the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research and McSilver Professor of Poverty Studies at NYU Silver School of Social Work in September 2016. Dr. Lindsey was previously an Associate Professor at NYU Silver.

Prior to joining NYU Silver in 2014, Dr. Lindsey was an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and concurrently a Faculty Affiliate at the University of Maryland Department of Psychiatry’s Center for School Mental Health.

Dr. Lindsey is a child and adolescent mental health services researcher, and is particularly interested in the prohibitive factors that lead to unmet mental health need among vulnerable youth with serious psychiatric illnesses, including depression. He has received research support from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to examine the social network influences on perceptual and actual barriers to mental health care among African American adolescent males with depression. He also received NIMH funding to develop and test a treatment engagement intervention that promotes access to and use of mental health services among depressed adolescents in school- and community-based treatment.

Dr. Lindsey’s current research, funded by the Robin Hood Foundation and Annie E. Casey Foundation, involves the delivery of an innovative combination of interventions aimed at decreasing PTSD and depression symptoms, and improving positive parenting skills, among child-welfare involved mothers with trauma-related disorders.

A standing member of the NIMH Services Research Committee, standing member of the National Advisory Council, Center for Substance Abuse Prevention at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and a board member-at-large for the Society for Social Work and Research, Dr. Lindsey is also a member of the Ford Foundation Scholars Network on Masculinity and the Wellbeing of African American Males; the Emerging Scholars Interdisciplinary Network; and the Mental Health Education Integration Consortium. His published research has appeared in the American Journal of Men’s Health, Journal of Adolescent Health, Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, Journal of Black Psychology, General Hospital Psychiatry, Prevention Science, Psychiatric Services, and in the journal Social Work. Dr. Lindsey is also on the editorial board of the journals Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research and Children and Schools.

Dr. Lindsey holds a PhD in social work and MPH from the University of Pittsburgh; an MSW from Howard University; and a BA in sociology from Morehouse College. He also completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in public health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University.

Thanks for Listening!

I appreciate you visiting our site today and for listening to this episode.

If you're listening through the Apple Podcast App, please help us by partnering with us to grow this movement. The first step to helping us reach more trailblazers is to leave us a 5 star review for The Trailblazers Podcast! (Please click the link from your cell phone, then click the REVIEWS tab). Ratings, reviews and subscribes are extremely helpful to expanding our reach within the Apple community.