School News

The Adler School of Professional Psychology has been awarded a $10,000 grant from the Pierce Family Foundation to support the School’s Institute on Social Exclusion and its pioneering Mental Health Impact Assessment (MHIA) project, developed to improve the mental health and well-being of people in vulnerable communities.

The Foundation provided its support based on the ISE’s ongoing MHIA project launched in January, as well as its MHIA work in fall 2010 examining how amendments to Chicago’s vacant property ordinance would affect community mental health in the city’s Englewood neighborhood.

Through the current MHIA launched in January, the ISE is examining the use of arrest records in employment decisions—regardless of whether the arrest leads to a conviction—and the far-reaching ramifications of that practice for low-income, especially minority, communities such as Englewood.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is revising its policy guidance on the use of arrest records in employment decisions, arguing that such use may violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act especially when those records are used to disproportionately eliminate minority job applicants and are not relevant to the applicants’ ability to perform specific jobs. Currently, employers often ask job applicants about arrest records, effectively depressing employment in many minority communities.

Policymakers must understand the mental health implications of their policy decisions not only in employment, but also in transportation, education and a range of other “non-health” policy domains—especially in a context of shrinking funding for mental health, said Lynn Todman, Ph.D, executive director of the Institute on Social Exclusion and leader of the MHIA Project.

As an advancement of current Health Impact Assessment (HIA) practice, the MHIA is intended to help policy makers ensure that their decisions support population mental health and promote mental health equity.

“We are honored that the Pierce Family Foundation has chosen to support our work as a transformative practice that will improve the lives of people who live in vulnerable communities,” Todman said.

About the Pierce Family Foundation

The Pierce Family Foundation supports nonprofit organizations providing essential social services in the areas of housing and opportunities for homeless people primarily in the Chicago metropolitan region. For more information, visit www.piercefamilyfoundation.org.

About the Adler School of Professional Psychology

The Adler School of Professional Psychology has provided quality education through a Scholar/Practitioner model for more than 50 years. The School’s mission is to train socially responsible graduates who continue the visionary work of Alfred Adler throughout the world. The Adler School has 11 graduate-level programs enrolling more than 1,000 students at its campuses in Chicago and Vancouver, British Columbia.

About the Institute on Social Exclusion

The Adler School’s Institute on Social Exclusion (ISE) works to build strategic alliances to ensure that all members of society have safe housing, quality education and healthcare, fair terms of employment, nutritious food, personal safety, and judicial equity.  It works to dismantle the barriers to these essential rights, opportunities, and resources by advocating for structural change in our society through research, community outreach and public education. For more information about the ISE and its Mental Health Impact Asesssment project, visit the ISE page of the Adler School website.

Contact:
Kim McCullough
Director of Communication
Adler School of Professional Psychology
(312) 662-4124 or via email.