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Joint New York State And Israel Collaberation New Hope For The Mentally Ill

James Stone, Commissioner of Mental Health for the State of New York, and Dina Feldman, Deputy Minister of Health for Mental Health for Israel met and discussed ways to improve treatment for the seriously mentally ill both in New York State and Israel.

In 1998, Drs. Michael and Esta Miran of the Michael Miran, Ph.D., Psychologist P.C., visited Israeli treatment programs and presented a discussion of their treatment strategies at the Israel Ministry of Health Annual Conference on Resiliency and Pathology. At the conference the Miran's and Israeli mental health professionals laid the basis for what would become a planning group to use and evaluate Neurocognitive treatment strategies.

The next step was to have the Israel team visit Rochester for training in the Miran's Neurocognitive treatment program. A program designed to help people with Schizophrenia to improve their attention, thinking and social skills so that they can integrate into the community, and make easier transitions to college and employment. Simultaneously, they are treated in a non-stigmatizing milieu, aiming to transform the people with Schizophrenia into independent, responsible and contributing adults in the community.

A delegation of five mental health professionals from Israeli Dina Feldman - Head of Research and Education and Planning, Ministry of Health, Naomi Hadas Lidor, Ph.D. OTR, Ayala Levi BA OTR, Ruth Shinitzky MA OTR, and Yael Nissan BA OTR, attended a training session at the Miran's Treatment Center in Rochester, New York. The Treatment Center led by Drs. Michael and Esta Miran developed and refined, over a period of 10 years, a high tech Neurocognitive treatment program for the seriously mentally ill. This innovative treatment program was in fact based on a head injury treatment model originally developed by Dr. Yehuda Ben- Yishay, jointly the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the New York University Medical Center's Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation.