NEWS

from Central Connecticut State University
Honored as a "Leadership Institution" by the Association of American Colleges & Universities

Media contact: Bart Fisher, Associate Director of Marketing and Communications

(860) 832-1624; Fisherb@ccsu.edu

CCSU Hosts Crisis Intervention Team Symposium

NEW BRITAIN – (November 26, 2007) CCSU will host the Third Annual Advanced Crisis Intervention Team Symposium, featuring Dr. Frederick J. Frese as the keynote speaker, from 9 a.m.- 2 p.m., November 28 at Alumni Hall in the Student Center.  It is open only to Crisis Intervention Team mental health providers.

Dr. Frese, who earned a Doctorate in Psychology from Ohio University, spent 30 years working with those afflicted with serious mental illness. What separates him from his professional peers however is his intrinsic understanding of schizophrenia from a personal as well as a clinic perspective.

While working as a guard officer for the nuclear weapons arsenal at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida, Dr. Frese experienced his first schizophrenic break. For the next 10 years he was in and out of mental hospitals, often on secure wards. Despite that perceived disability he was able to earn a degree from the American Graduate School of International Management in Phoenix, Arizona, and a Masters and Doctorate in Psychology.

The speaker has been active as a consumer/provider and advocate in the mental health movement for many years.  He is on the Board of Trustees for the Treatment Advocacy Center in Washington, D. C. and the founder of the Community and State Hospital Section of the American Psychological Association, where he is currently involved in the Task Force for the Seriously Mentally Ill/Emotionally Disturbed.

He is a winner of the American Psychological Association’s prestigious Harold Hildreth Award, the organization’s highest honor for distinguished service in public service psychology.

Dr. Frese is the editor of “The Role of Organized Psychology in the Treatment of the Serious Mentally Illness,” (Jossey-Bass) in 2000. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters, and lectures widely in the United States and Canada. Dr. Frese has been featured on CNN, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, The Chicago Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and in the video “I’m Still Here: The Truth About Schizophrenia.”

The CCSU symposium, “Strategies for Communicating with Individuals Experiencing Psychosis,” is funded by the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and co-sponsored by the Connecticut Alliance to Benefit Law Enforcement, the National Alliance on Mental Illness-CT, CCSU’s Institute for the Study of Crime and Justice and the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

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