Chris Celio is Recognized with the Hope Award from the SPIRIT Class of 2022

Contra Costa Behavioral Health Office for Consumerr Empowerment's SPIRIT Class of 2022 awarded the 2022 Hope Award to Chris Celio, Hume's Vice President of Clinical Operations. Chris enjoyed providing four classes to SPIRIT this year and was especially honored to receive such a prestiigoius award from the very talented and engaging 2022 SPIRIT Class.

Chris gave the following acceptance speech to the SPIRIT graduates, their families and friends, SPIRIT alumni, and the leaders and providers from Contra Costa Behavioral Health and county agencies.

"I’d like to start by thanking you all for this great honor. It was truly my honor and a highlight of my year to be a part of this great SPIRIT Class of 2022. More important than that, I’d like everyone to know that Hume is hiring, especially in Richmond, and also that Hume has also partnered with Contra Costa College to offer paid internships for Contra Costa College students.

I’d like to thank everyone at Hume that does the real work to make our SPIRIT Internship program happen, including Adrian, Alika, Karly, Reynold, Pooja, Margaret, Rebecca, Ryanne, and Amelia and everyone else who brings the interns under their wings.

And now I’d like to start with a song, and if you’re of a certain age, sing along.

(lyrics ommited since we don't own the copywrite)

Don McClain wrote that song about a tragedy, when a plane crashed and he lost his musical idol. He used that suffering to express his feelings about that moment and the way the world had gone since then. This was a trauma that shaped him, that he couldn’t let go of, until he found a way to understand his experience and express himself.

When I was in college, I went to volunteer at the Crisis Hotline of Los Angeles. It took 32 hours of weekend training to be accepted as a volunteer. As I entered the classroom, I honestly expected to be joined by fellow psychology college and graduate students. I mean, who else could do that job right?

I was wrong. I was oh so wrong as I was the only one in school there. My fellow volunteers were parents, retired folks, plumbers, and, since it was LA, many actors.

During the month long training, I struggled while the other volunteers flourished.

An actor came up to me toward the end and let me know what might be getting in my way. She said the rest of the class were coming from their hearts, from their own suffering and experiences, and I was coming from my brain and from behind a wall.

So I did what I could to become more present and worked at starting to connect on a human level, with the work and with my own story. I ended up passing the class and being put on the crisis line, and that same actor was on my shift for my first call.

I was freezing up, I was thinking too much. She couldn’t hear the call but she knew what was going on. She nodded her head, and said, “You got this. Use your heart.”

I took a moment, took a breadth, and I let my heart wander, and I remembered that the caller had mentioned she was working on becoming a hip hop artist. I asked her to sing me one of her songs, and after that, we talked about her lyrics.

Her lyrics told her story better than she could say them, and we connected on the various verses, where they came from, and why she chose each word. She had called in crisis, but she decided that her song was too important, and that she needed to keep singing it. She ended the call with purpose, and with hope.

For me, that one call unlocked something in me; it gave me permission to lead with my heart, my compassion, my curiosity, and let the rest happen when it happens.

In SPIRIT, you have all written your own song. You took your experiences in life, and your fellowship in this course, and you chose the lyrics, you picked the tune, and you are singing it loud and proud today. Using your lived experience, you will sing that song throughout your work, and you will harmonize with the experience of those you serve, and it will become a new song each time. 

Those new songs will surprise you often, and take you down verses and choruses you didn’t know you had in you and notes you didn’t know you could create. Sometimes that song will sound beautiful, other times, you’ll have to hold back your judgment as you endure a song that the world wouldn’t see beauty in.

That song is the song of hope. That song will get stuck in your head, and it will get stuck in your consumer’s head. Hope has a way of doing that. Once it’s there, it tries to stick around, and it tries to build on itself, even if we don’t want to sing a happy tune. A good song can do that, it can add energy and drive and motivation.

But if no one is singing songs of hope, it’s pretty easy to get lost in despair. Please remember that you are not a solo artist, you are now a part of the choir of the Class of 2022, and a part of the all-time Choir of SPIRIT Graduates, singing songs of hope together, and sometimes you will need others to sing the hope for you, since we all need support systems in this work.

So no matter what you do next, sing your song loud and proud today and every day. Many people along the way sang their songs to you, and you ended up here. And now it’s your turn.

And now more than ever, you are needed.

As the Miles Hall Crisis Hub expands and the county’s Anytime, Anywhere, Anyone program begins, you are the people we are calling on to sing your tune every time, everywhere, and to everyone. This program will utilize people with lived experience to resolve crises in the moment, in the streets and in the homes. Let your song become hope in those moments of despair, for those who were called about, and those who did the calling.

For everyone in this room knows that sometimes it only takes one good song to knock you out of a bad mood, and sometimes it just takes that right moment in a crisis to light up the hope that is needed to find your way out of that darkness.

In conclusion, remember that hope is contagious, so pass it on."

SPIRIT Graduation
July 27, 2022

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Act Now! Website Allows Feedback to be Sent Directly to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and Alameda County Behavioral Health Leadership

Natasha Molony, PhD, Hume Center's Director of Training, Has Been Accepted to the Board of BAPIC

R.K. Janmeja "Meji" Singh, PhD

R.K. Janmeja (Meji) Singh, PhD

Meji received a Lifetime Achievement award from California State Psychological Association. The Surgeon General of the United States Army recognized him for his Consultation Services to the Letterman Army Medical Center Department of Psychiatry (1973-91), Presidio San Francisco. Oxford Symposium awarded him an award for Outstanding Contribution to School Based Family Counseling. The United States Congress recognized him for his fifty years Community Service as a Clinical Psychologist. He received his Ph.D. degree in Clinical Psychology from Boston University in 1965. He took a year of seminars with Gerald Caplan, M.D., Professor at Harvard School of Public Health in Community Mental Health Consultation and Prevention of Mental Disorders. He was a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Center for Training in Community Psychiatry and Mental Health Administration (1964-66) where he subsequently served as the Assistant Director of the Center (19966-1980). He was an Adjunct Professor of Psychology for the Doctoral Program in School Psychology at U.C. Berkeley (1991-2007). He was the Founding President of the Hume Center (1993-2001). He was the Dean of Rosebridge Graduate School of Integrative Psychology (1986-1996). He was the Deputy Commissioner for Preventive Services at Genesee county Community Mental Health Services, Flint, Michigan (1966-68). He has developed award winning community mental health programs. He has worked for State Hospitals for the Mentally Ill for three years and over fifty years in community Mental Health Programs. He has provided consultation to Mental Health, Academic, Human Service Organizations and Business corporations across the United States. Currently he is the Chief Training Consultant at the Community Behavioral Health Training Center, Concord, California.

Quotes from Our Founder, Meji Singh, PhD

#MugQuotes

As a symbol of graduation, each trainee who graduates receives a limited edition Hume Center Mug with a quote from our founder Meji Singh, PhD on it. The quote changes each year.

2010-2011: Healing is not what we do to them. It is how we change our own reaction and feelings in relationship to them.

2011-2012: The clients create their own reality in relationship to the psychotherapists. It is the psychotherapist’s response that is different from the client’s expectations that brings about change.

2012-2013: Notice and explore.

2013-2014: Through psychotherapy, if we understand the suffering our clients have experienced and the way they have coped which may have resulted in symptoms and labels, then through that process they can learn her ways to be more satisfied and productive.

2014-2015: No implementation without participation.

2015-2016: You must anchor yourself. You cannot unload a ship in a storm.

2016-2017: How can you get someone to a place when you aren’t listening to where they want to go?

2017-2018: If we recognize our interconnectedness, we will find peace.

2018-2019:

"The healing process takes place in the context of a relationship." ~Meji Singh, PhD, Founding President

“It takes a community to heal a community.” ~Joty Sikand, PsyD, President

2019-2020: If you only treat symptoms, you're just chasing shadows.

2020-2021: Instead of listening to judge, listen to understand where the person is coming from.

2021-2022: "Community Mental Health is…

...where people who have the problem participate in solving it." - RK Janmeja Singh, Ph.D.

...the community taking care of the mental health of its people” - Joty Sikand, Psy.D.

2022-2023: When my candle is lit, I shine. When you light your candle from mine, then you shine.

Hume marks Chinese New Year with a Guqin Performance

The Power of Support and Advocacy in Peer Mental Health

Pooja Rupani, PsyD

Dr. Pooja Rupani graduated as a Counseling Psychologist from the Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland. Post licensure in the UK, Dr Rupani worked as Psychologist in a Primary Care mental health team, Improving Access to Psychological Services (IAPT) in London, UK for three years. Her role at IAPT involved conducting diagnostic and psychological assessments, and planning and delivering treatments to people with Depressive, Anxiety, and Eating Disorders, and she also completed the certification training for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Dr. Rupani was promoted to the Senior Management Team as the Step 3 Lead, managing and supervising a team of licensed psychologists, CBT therapists, Dynamic Interpersonal Therapists, Couples Therapists, and trainee CBT therapists. She also supervised a team of Assistant Psychologists responsible for community outreach and engagement, with the aim of increasing awareness of mental health services available to the community. 

After relocating to the United States, Dr Rupani joined the Hume Center in 2016 as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School Based Program in Pleasanton. She subsequently transferred to the Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP) in Concord, where she has been providing group, individual and family psychotherapy to adults with severe mental health difficulties. She has been licensed as a Psychologist in California since 2018 and upon licensure was promoted as the Program Manager for PHP. Her role as Program Manager has included providing group and individual supervision, training and orientation, and practising Mental Health Consultation. Alongside her clinical work, Dr Rupani has also functioned as the Clinic Manager of the Concord clinic, where she has been working to streamline the intake process across the different programs in Contra Costa County to ensure quick access to appropriate services for clients, and more recently the merger of outpatient Medicare and MediCal services at the Concord Clinic.

Hume Helped Reimagine Mental Health Care

On August 27, 2020, Hume's Foundint President Meji Singh, PhD, Director of Training Natasha Molony, PhD, and Director of Clinical Programs Chris Celio, PsyD participated in Putnam Clubhouse's free virtual conference called Reimagine Mental Health Care. The list of speakers and topics was very innovative, as mental health directors, consumers, providers, family members, advocates, and innovators joined together to provide a day's worth of engaging discussions on to reimagine mental health care. Hume Center was expecially proud of Natasha's thorough and insightful interview of our foudner Meji as they went in depth into his half century of experience in the mental health field and how he is trying to help community behavioral health become more effective through the launch of the Behavioral Health Consultation Training Center. Chris Celio moderated the conference and helped weave the whole experience together from session to session, with the day culminating in a realization that recovery is real and ther are many traditional and non-traditional paths to reach it.

Recordings of the days sessions are available at https://www.putnamclubhouse.org/reimaginementalhealth