American Mental Health Foundation


The American Mental Health Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the welfare of individuals with emotional problems and advancing mental-health research. AMHF is established to organize educational seminars and to disseminate its knowledge.

History

AMHF was chartered in 1924 and incorporated in New York State in 1954 as a 501 not-for-profit organization, so recognized by the U.S. federal government. Former chairmen include Hon. Harvey J. Ross of the 143rd New York State Legislature, Austrian writer-in-exile Hermann Broch and Richard Weil Jr., one-time head of Macy's Department Store. The chairman from February 18, 2010, to May 1, 2016, was John P. Fowler. Ms. Jacqueline A. Lofaro assumed chairmanship on March 29, 2017. Michelle Harrison, M.D., trained as a psychopharmacologist, is the newest board member: elected on June 26, 2018.
As part of its educational mission, the organization has maintained a dedication to diversity and making mental-health services available to everyone, regardless of culture, race, or sexual orientation. Former director of research Stefan Sarkozy de Somogyi Schill pioneered in group psychotherapy, as well an advocacy for gay individuals when he took a position favoring Lyndon Baines Johnson aide Walter Jenkins, whose alleged homosexuality became a political issue.
An early affiliate and clinical supervisor was Otto Kauders. In 1948, de Schill was appointed director of research, following a recommendation by AMHF chairman at the time—Broch as well as Kauders—remaining so until his death on February 9, 2005. The position of executive director was filled by Evander Lomke shortly after.
In the 1960s, de Schill defended LBJ aide Walter Jenkins during a Washington scandal. As part of his work in group psychotherapy for AMHF, during the 1970s through the 1990s, de Schill co-edited, singly edited, as well as contributed to several books devoted to these modalities: The Challenge to Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and The Challenge for Group Psychotherapy. Crucial Choices—Crucial Changes: The Resurrection of Psychotherapy was issued in 2000 by Prometheus and republished by AMHF Books in 2012. De Schill's work, under AMHF, has appeared in French A la recherche de l'avenir, German Psychoanalytische Therapie in Gruppen, and Italian Terapia psicoanalitica di gruppo.
In 2016, AMHF again appeared in The New York Times in a letter from executive director Evander Lomke rebutting the medical practice of "growth attenuation" among seriously disabled young people. Also in April 2016, AMHF issued a monograph describing two years of collaborative research with Astor Services for Children & Families regarding early signs of schizophrenia and other psychoses, and palliation/prevention. On March 27, 2017, Lomke placed an op-ed, on coping with the psychological dimensions of fear, anxiety and social stress, and terrorism in the San Francisco Chronicle. On October 18, 2018, an article co-written by Dr. Raymond B. Flannery Jr. and Lomke, entitled "SUDEP and Grief: Overview and Current Issues," appeared online in the peer-reviewed journal Psychiatric Quarterly.
Beginning summer 2014, AMHF embarked on a research project with Pearson Assessment to measure older individuals, in the serious-to-profound range of intellectual disabilities, for behavioral changes. Such a test would be in the mode of the existing Wechsler, Vineland, and Bayley Scales and have wide-ranging applications. AMHF is awaiting further funding to continue. The findings of the AMHF 2-year study with Astor Services for Children & Families were published by American Mental Health Foundation Books in April 2016.
Guiding publications, blogs, and research endeavors is an Advisory Board with mental-health specialists, including Eric J. Green, Ph.D., James Campbell Quick, Ph.D., Jeanine Lee Skorinko Ph.D., Paul Quinnett, Ph.D, and Alexis Tomarken. M.S.W., Ph.D. Each is an authority in a specialized field relevant to the AMHF mission: psychoanalysis, psychodynamic therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, spirituality and mental health, PTSD, the DSM-5, depression and suicide, the type of grief that does not dispel, as well as developmental disabilities and autism. An ongoing blog as well as messages on Twitter and Facebook allow the Foundation to bring its cutting-edge research, advocacy, and activism to its followers.

American Mental Health Foundation Books

AMHF supports the written work of PTSD researcher and authority Flannery, clinical psychologist with Harvard Medical School and The University of Massachusetts Medical School, by publishing The Violent Person: Professional Risk Management Strategies for Safety and Care in 2009 and in April 2016 Violence: Why People Do Bad Things, with Strategies to Reduce that Risk. The Violent Person received notices in peer-reviewed journals. Flannery's concise Coping with Anxiety in an Age of Terrorism, was published June 2017. Flannery's book on the nationally recognized program he developed is titled The Assaulted Staff Action Program.
Working with the Erich Fromm estate and its literary executor, Dr. Rainer Funk, four posthumous books by Fromm have been reissued as well as issued for the first time by the publishing division of AMHF in 2010. Included are The Pathology of Normalcy, Beyond Freud, The Heart of Man, and The Revolution of Hope. Fromm, an original member of the loose association known as the Frankfurt School of social theorists, writes in the neo-Freudian tradition on topics such as free will, the vulnerability of populations to dictators and fascism, the disruptive role of emerging technology on human personality and human nature. There was a special focus on the virtue of hope, which he saw as an antidote to the preceding conditions and portals of enlightenment.
With Astor Services for Children & Families from 2012 to 2014, AMHF has responded to a need noted by Paul Gionfriddo in the screening of several-thousand youth in a county-wide catchment area, to identify approximately 15 at-risk individuals who will receive a palliative-prevention treatment.
American Mental Health Foundation Books is also the publisher of Dr. Henry Kellerman on personality formation, delusion, individuals in institutional settings, the psychodynamics of group therapy ; May 11, 2018, Psychotherapeutic Traction: Uncovering the Patient's Power-theme and Basic-wish was issued, and in 2020 Dr. Kellerman's Curing Psychological Symptoms is scheduled; PTSD expert Dr. James Campbell Quick was published by AMHF in 2013 on the psychology of personal fulfillment for women.
In addition to its traditional forms of publishing and educational seminars, AMHF offered its first interactive Webinars, by Jungian therapist Dr. Eric J. Green of its professional-advisory board, in September and November, 2014, respectively, on the subjects of adult-play therapy and children in crisis. Future Webinars with Dr. Green are planned. The others are available on the AMHF homepage.
American Mental Health Foundation Books is distributed by Lantern. William Van Ornum, clinical psychologist, professor at Marist College and Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is a special adviser to the publishing program and is also on the professional advisory board, referenced above. The current President and executive director of AMHF is the above-named Evander Lomke.

Select publications by AMHF Books