TR Board Member Michael Nielsen is a behavioral health professional with almost 50 years’ experience in the behavioral health field when he retired in 2023. He has worked at places like Community Psychiatric Clinic (currently run by Sound Mental Health) and has experience creating, managing, and overseeing many innovative mental health programs–including the El Rey. Mike brings his perspective of experience, compassion, and insight to help TR continue to be one of the top facilities in the county (his words!). Here is a bit more about Mike and his experiences with the mental health system.
Tell us about yourself:
I have an MSW master’s in social work, and I really started in the youth system many years ago when I was an undergrad. I then went traveling for a year all over the world and came back and decided to get my master’s degree.
In almost 50 years doing this work, I put together a lot of programs; I did 20 capital projects, either ones that we built or that were acquisition rehabs. At one point in time at Community Psychiatric Clinic (CPC), I oversaw 40 facilities that provided a whole continuum of care for people, from highly structured, intensive residential treatment to independent living in family homes that we that we had across the system. I’ve been fortunate to get two King County exemplary service awards for programs that I that I started–which is really gratifying. At one point in 1988, I got hired by Community Psychiatric Clinic to open a program, the El Rey, which was kind of a new, revolutionary program at the time. And the first person I hired to be part of the management team there was Darcell, who, of course, is now the CEO at TR.
After I spent about 40 years–45 years altogether in behavioral health—and developed many, many residential treatment programs and housing programs over those years, I retired. I continued to stay involved in the field by joining the board at Crisis Connections, who I’d worked with for years while I was at CPC. I even became the board president there for a time. After my term was up at Crisis Connections, I took some time off from board work but soon found myself looking for something new. I saw an ad that Darcell, the CEO of TR, had about needing board members. I was so excited, I said, “This is fantastic!” and called her immediately, and now here I am!
What makes TR special?
I have been part of this field and this system since 1988 and know the history of the system, because I’ve lived through it. And I saw the good, the bad and the ugly of the residential system–and there were some really bad ones. There were also some good ones–we had some very good ones at CPC. Over the years I really got a sense of what it takes to provide quality services, and also what happens when you don’t provide quality services. Without quality services, people end up on the streets, cycling through homelessness and experiencing mental health crises, and the entire community suffers when people don’t get the treatment they need.
I don’t have all the answers to what we can do to make access to services more accessible, but what I do know is that this organization [Transitional Resources] provides the best of the best [treatment]. I honestly think Darcell and TR are top leaders of this kind of program. TR is the greatest program that I have ever seen in the system, including some the ones that I ran at CPC. There’s just a sense of community at TR that is unmatched. The quality of services to TR’s clients is just unparalleled thanks to this strong community and dedication from not only the leaders like Darcell and Julie but also all of the staff who work hard to make TR not just a facility but a home.
Can you give any insight into some current challenges that the behavioral health system is facing now?
I know one of the major problems that we’ve had consistently is that Washington state has never been a state that has been generous in in funding these services. But it’s, it’s been a chronic issue for the entire time that I was in the system. There are just other states that do a better job of this. And now we are facing a budget deficit at the state level and then cuts to Medicaid and other programs where TR gets our funding, and so this problem seems to be getting worse before it gets better.
The county has stepped up a bit in this fight—the recent Crisis Care Center Levy has added additional resources not only with the new emergency crisis buildings, but also funds to help with staffing shortages. The salary increases are a huge bolster because the city, and this region, is very expensive to live in.
Back when I was still at CPC, the funding that we got from the county for these facilities was grossly underfunded. In the past, we literally had staff on food stamps because we couldn’t pay them a living wage. It’s just horrifying to me, that anybody that’s doing this important work–and its very hard but necessary work—would be on food stamps. They need to be paid a suitable wage. TR has taken steps in the past several years to do this—we’ve offered all of our clinical employees wage increases so that our staff feel secure and supported and so our clients continue to receive consistent care with people they know and trust.
Do you have anything else you want to touch on that you haven’t said yet?
Yes, I would just like to say that stigma of mental illness is so crushing, and we need to do all we can to continue to advocate and overcome it. I wish everybody could understand every single one of these folks, every single person that’s homeless on the street–who’s an addict, who’s dying on the streets from fentanyl, people with serious psychiatric disabilities–they’re human beings. Each and every one of them had their own hopes and dreams for their lives, and all they want is the opportunity to reach for those again after going through a really tough illness. People walk down the streets and they see people talking to themselves, or they see people lying passed out in an alleyway, and it’s really easy to demonize them. It is my fervent hope that we can stop that and find a way to find some compassion.
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