Thirty-one-year-old Jamie lives with a developmental disability and also struggled for years with suicidal ideations and psychiatric hospitalizations. Living independently and maintaining interpersonal relationships was extremely difficult due to challenges with a personality disorder and bipolar disorder. For much of her life, Jamie yearned to find independence. In 2008, Jamie entered our Supervised Apartments where she started to learn coping and anger management skills. The program provides adults with developmental disabilities the necessary daily living skills to function on their own with minimal assistance such as meal preparation, medication administration, household upkeep and community integration. Today Jamie can proudly say that she has not had any hospitalizations in nearly ten years and no longer experiences thoughts of suicide. With [...]

Thursday afternoon, July 21, phones started to ring and buzz constantly, Facebook became flooded with posts and the world shared in heartbreak as they discovered Chester Bennington had committed suicide at age 41. The Linkin Park lead singer’s death shocked and saddened many fans including me. More importantly, six children lost their father, a wife lost her husband, two parents lost their son and a brother lost his brother. When I received the text about his death, I didn’t want to believe it. I told myself my friend had simply come across fake news. I took to the internet hoping with everything I had that it wasn’t true. My heart shattered when I saw the many posts on my [...]

For many families in our area, summer vacation means a struggle to feed their children healthy, filling meals. An estimated 39,000 children in South Jersey are at risk of malnutrition during the summer months when schools’ federal breakfast and lunch programs are not available. For families living below the poverty level, school means more than just education; it also means a dependable source of food. YOU can make a difference! Drop off donations. Monday-Friday, 9am to 5pm, at the following locations: Mt. Holly Food Pantry 770 Woodlane Road, Suite 16 Mt. Holly, NJ 08060 Berlin Food Pantry 128 Cross Keys Road Berlin, NJ 08009 Hold a drive. You can make a difference by hosting a food drive to help replenish [...]

The department of Housing and Urban Development reports: On any given night, there are over 600,000 homeless in the U.S. 8,941 people experience homelessness in New Jersey Homelessness in NJ has decreased 12.4% since 2015 Sixty five year old Joseph became homeless in 1988 after a devastating fire destroyed his home and belongings of 25 years. With no family to turn to for help, he moved around finding shelter in the woods and abandoned buildings. For the past 10 years he called a small space under a bridge in Mercer County his home. This is where Joseph’s story begins to turn from tragedy to hope. Our Project for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PATH) program first met Joseph in January of 2016. [...]

As Mental Health Month comes to a close, it‘s important to continue to focus on mental wellness throughout the year. So often we place emphasis on improving physical wellness, that mental wellness does not receive the attention it deserves. Mental wellness, defined by the World Health Organization, is a state of well-being in which every individual realizes their own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to the community. The state of one’s mental health can influence the ways in which they look at themselves, their life and others around them. Without a healthy mental state it can be extremely challenging to live life to the fullest extent. [...]

After serving our country, many veterans face difficulties when they return to civilian life. Without structure and support, many of these men and women feel lost and may face hardships such as homelessness, unemployment, hunger, addiction or mental illness. Since 2008, Oaks Integrated Care has partnered with the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs to provide services for homeless or at risk veterans through the Veterans Haven program. The program provides transitional housing for veterans and emphasizes sobriety, employment and reintegration into the community. The Treatment Team, comprised of Addiction Specialists, Social Workers, RNs and Vocational Counselors, offers group therapy, job readiness, relapse prevention, health and wellness programs, life strategies, anger management, computer training and a Post-Traumatic Stress [...]

To celebrate Mental Health Month this May, the Tri-State K-9 Crisis Response Team returned to Oaks Integrated Care for a 2nd year to teach us about their therapy dogs and the different services they provide! The therapy dogs serve children, families, neighborhoods and communities that are in crisis in an effort to provide comfort, stress relief, emotional support and crisis intervention services. Teams will comfort victims of trauma, disaster, or violence fostering resilience and self-efficacy. When asked about the process of becoming a handler/dog team on the crisis response team explained, “Each dog must have been a therapy dog for at least a year. The dog and handler need to have basic obedience skills, manners and be able to pass [...]

May is Mental Health Month! As Oaks Integrated Care joins the Instagram community, we want to shed light on the strides the social media platform has taken to support mental health. Instagram is one of the largest social media platforms in the world. Recognizing their ability to offer help and support, the photo sharing app has stepped forward in an effort to better the mental health of their users. Recently they introduced a new tool aimed at helping users who suffer from mental illness and depression through encouragement from friends and family. 1 in 5 people experience mental illness in a given year according to the World Health Organization and an estimated 350 million people suffer from depression. To offer [...]