STORY BY STEVE HOLT
PHOTO BY CHRIS SORENSEN
In the early 1970s, the notion that people living with chronic mental illness could recover and lead relatively normal lives was still novel. The signing of the Community Mental Health Act of 1963 by President John F. Kennedy (Hon.’55), along with the movement to remove Americans from institutions and asylums, was considered revolutionary in providing needed mental health services to communities across the country. While the effort was never adequately funded, it created new opportunities for counselor training programs and rehabilitation research. A decade later, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 banned discrimination on the basis of disability in any federal agency or program receiving federal funding. That year, Gayle Berg, an enthusiastic college graduate from Long Island, enrolled in Sargent to pursue a master’s of science in rehabilitation counseling, where a new specialization in psychiatric rehabilitation had been launched.
Berg (’74) obtained a teaching assistantship under William A. Anthony, founder of the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation and considered by many to be the “father of the recovery movement.” During her time at Sargent, Berg also worked part-time for a nonprofit that provided services to individuals with intellectual disabilities, putting lessons from Anthony and other professors into immediate use.
“Bill was creating the processes and mechanisms for systemic and personal transformation,” Berg says. “He was demonstrating that recovery is possible, and his pioneering efforts were creating a major paradigm shift in treatment and service delivery, which was so badly needed in our country at that time.”
“[William Anthony] was demonstrating that recovery is possible, and his pioneering efforts were creating a major paradigm shift in treatment and service delivery, which was so badly needed in our country at that time.”
Berg founded Psychological Solutions, her New York–based practice, on Anthony’s recovery movement principles: helping people with mental illness participate in society. She has worked to improve and expand the availability of mental health care as a practicing psychologist and member of many advocacy and governance organizations, and has ardently supported Sargent’s training of new mental health care professionals who are committed to recovery.
The Needle Moves on Care and Policy
After graduating, Berg returned to New York to see if she could apply the principles of psychiatric rehabilitation in a hospital setting, which she says had been operating like a “revolving door” for people with psychiatric challenges. She joined the staff of a prominent New York City teaching hospital, where she helped to develop an innovative day treatment center of services for individuals in mental health crisis or living with psychological conditions. She and her colleagues implemented a work readiness training program as well as treatment-focused groups for families and patients. They also started a group home for patients to learn independent living skills. “We moved the needle big time at that moment in this hospital,” says Berg, who earned a PhD in psychology from New York University while working full-time at the hospital.
She eventually left the hospital and in 1984 founded Psychological Solutions, a private psychology practice in Roslyn Heights, N.Y. Here, she would confront the negative impact that a lack of funding for care has on access to services for these individuals seeking psychological help. “Insurance carriers were still paying for 30 days of inpatient stays,” she says, “but not for outpatient mental health services or care.” This spurred Berg’s work as a mental health advocate to improve and expand access to quality mental health care. For decades she along with others lobbied Congress for equal treatment, or parity, of mental health conditions and substance use disorders in insurance plans, and in 2008, Congress passed the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equality Act. Now, someone living with mental health conditions like depression or schizophrenia could no longer be discriminated against by insurance companies. Their coverage is now required to be on par with their plans’ reimbursements for treatment of diabetes or other medical conditions.
Continuing the Work
Besides her advocacy work, Berg has served on several boards and agencies to promote access to quality mental health care. She continues to fund the training of new mental health professionals through her support of BU, where she serves as a member of the Sargent Dean’s Advisory Board and the University Advisory Board. In 2009, Berg made a $1.5 million gift to Sargent—at the time the largest single donation in the college’s history—to create an endowed fund for interdisciplinary research in psychiatric rehabilitation.
Berg says she won’t stop advocating and giving of her time and resources “until the true promise of recovery is realized and there is quality mental health care easily accessible to everyone in need.” She says the mental health system needs to include a comprehensive array of evidence-based services, including prevention, early detection and evaluation, treatment, and aftercare. Looking back on her role in shaping the changes in mental health care over the past four decades, Berg feels fortunate to have been able to pursue her passion and to have played her part in transforming a system that has been stressed in recent years: “I’ve learned that with crisis comes opportunity, and the pandemic—with its concurrent mental health crisis—creates the possibility where a vision of recovery can be turned into reality.”