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2016 ANNUAL REPORT Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services has been providing free mental health, substance use disorder and suicide prevention services for 75 years. Didi Hirsch is dedicated to serving communities where stigma or poverty limits access. Its Suicide Prevention Center is the nation’s first and a leader in training, research and services. Adult Services Child & Family Services • Therapy and medication • Family-focused treatment • Clinic and field-based services • Birth-to-Five program • Integrated healthcare • School-based therapy • Crisis residential treatment • Military families support • Transition age youth • Trauma-focused treatment • Older adult services Suicide Prevention Services • Wellness Centers • 24/7 bilingual Crisis Line Substance Use Disorder Services • Crisis chat and text • Substance use treatment • Bereavement support and therapy • Adolescent treatment & prevention • Survivors of Suicide Attempts groups • Mother/child residential treatment • Disaster Distress Helpline • Homeless outreach • Training, education and outreach • Assessment, linkage & referrals • Suicide Response Team • Research and innovation www.didihirsch.org /didihirsch.org @DidiHirsch @Didi_Hirsch Restoring Equilibrium: In 1966, we opened defeated. Now on very positive terms, time has a clinic in Venice to improve access to health proved that nothing erases stigma like getting care for Latinos and African Americans. to know individuals one has stereotyped. Residents waited in long lines on opening day for brief counseling that helped families Bridging Gaps: Didi Hirsch’s commit- recover from crises like divorce and unem- ment to vulnerable communities has ployment. Now known as Crisis-Oriented prompted several mergers. 1) Under our Recovery Services or CORS, LA County’s wings, a small children’s clinic in Inglewood Department of Mental Health still trains pro- now serves all ages with over 125 staff. fessionals throughout Los Angeles to use the 2) The Suicide Prevention Center and clinics treatment model. in the Pico-Union area and South LA joined us when a family service organization failed. Transforming Team Didi: In 1974 we became a federally des- 3) With the support of former Supervisor ignated Community Mental Health Center– Michael Antonovich, we preserved a 50-year- Lives for responsible for providing prevention, early old mental health agency in Glendale that intervention and intensive mental health ser- serves the largest Armenian-American popu- 75 Years vices to residents of all ages on the Westside. lation in the nation. With a generous gift from Didi Hirsch and her family, we built a new headquarters and Crisis Support: Like the Great Depression, KITA S. CURRY, PhD renamed the agency in her honor. the Great Recession of 2008 was devastat- PRESIDENT/CEO ing financially and psychologically. In their Mothers With Children: We opened Via darkest hour, many Americans reached out Avanta, our residential program for women to our Suicide Prevention Center for support. with substance use disorders in 1979. It still is Since then, calls to our crisis line have tripled. In the 1930s a few compassionate women 200 volunteers. Here are some milestones one of only a few residential programs where In 1942 less than half the nation had home funded psychiatric care for adults devas- that illustrate our 75-year commitment to mothers can bring their young children, rather phones. Today, a significant number of young tated by the Great Depression. Buoyed by transforming lives, especially in communi- than having to choose between family and people reach us through chat and text, as well their success, they leveraged $5,000 from ties where stigma or poverty limits access. treatment. With the generous support of for- as the phone. the Community Chest and free space from mer Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, we added Cedars of Lebanon to create Los Angeles Who knows what the next 75 years will bring? The ABCs: Training future mental health a clinic on site to address the mental health Psychiatric Service—the first stand-alone I do know that only with the help of generous professionals has been a core value since the needs of the women and their children. non-profit psychiatric clinic in Los Angeles. individuals like you will we continue serving beginning. Our psychiatry residency program The Community Chest (now United Way) Standing Up to Stigma: In 1991, an organi- those most in need, training future mental and our predoctoral psychology internship and Cedars-Sinai continue to support us. zation objected when we purchased a nearby health professionals and advancing the field. were first accredited in the 1950s. Today, we property for one of our crisis residential Thank you for being part of Didi Hirsch’s past Out of acorns, mighty oaks grow. What began also train social workers, marriage and fam- programs. With hundreds of mental health and future. as an agency with three employees and nine ily counselors, nurse practitioners and physi- advocates on our side and pro bono legal rep- volunteers now has over 500 employees and cians’ assistants. resentation, every suit our neighbor filed was With gratitude, RESIDENTIAL SERVICES One in three homeless people in Los Angeles County are women and many were victims of domestic violence. Growing up with a stepfather who was support of her therapist and fellow resi- addicted to heroin, Fina Sanchez learned dents, she stopped using drugs. When her at a young age how police officers will boys came to live with her at Via Avanta, empty milk and cereal containers while the family worked through the trauma of searching for contraband. domestic violence and the six-month sep- In the face of her stepfather’s drug use, aration they had endured. her brother’s gang affiliation and her Fina and her boys, David, 6, and Andrew, mother’s neglect, she lost her way and 5, now live in a cheery, light-filled apart- became deeply depressed. By age 14, she ment in Glendale full of books, video games was drinking alcohol and joining peers and family photos. Fina, 36, is determined who were snorting methamphetamine in to provide the supportive environment she biology class. Fina managed to graduate went without as a child. She takes her sons from high school, but she soon became to weekly therapy sessions at Didi Hirsch homeless and developed a serious sub- Glendale and coordinates monthly visits stance use disorder. with her older son. She also volunteers at After the father of her first son got cus- her boys’ school, helps them with home- tody of their child, she had two more sons work and works weekends at a retail store. by a man who often hit her. Fina tried to “Via Avanta has such a caring environ- break free from her abuser, but it wasn’t ment,” she said. “They didn’t lose faith until a judge sent her to Didi Hirsch’s Via in me even when I lost faith in myself. Avanta residential treatment center for Without Via, I wouldn’t be alive today. The pregnant and parenting mothers that Fina people there saved my life.” was able to turn her life around. With the Most women experienced significant improvement in their relationships, less distress and fewer symptoms of mental illness when they graduated from Via Avanta. SUBSTANCE USE TREATMENT Homeless people are four times more likely to die prematurely. Edward “Kenneth” Givens, a “blackout workers, mental health professionals, drinker” who slept on the streets of down- medical staff and substance use counsel- town Los Angeles for more than two ors provided by Didi Hirsch. decades, was tired of waking up in jail The first time he tried to enter a detox- and not remembering how he got there. ification program, his withdrawal symp- “It’s very scary to wake up and wonder, toms were so severe that he walked out ‘Oh, my God, did I kill somebody? What and got drunk. But he credits the patience did I do?’ It was always, ‘Don’t worry, you and support of his Didi Hirsch substance were just drunk in public.’ But it made me use counselors with helping him to stop want to stop.” drinking in 2008—and keeping him sober That desire always ran up against ever since. what made him start drinking in the Today, his life is full of activities that first place: depression, mood swings, the have nothing to do with alcohol. He fre- voices he sometimes heard and a feeling quently visits with family members, plays that “maybe I’m not worthy.” If he drank, cards, rides a bike, grows vegetables and everything seemed OK—for the moment. flowers in a rooftop garden and volunteers He didn’t realize how bad things had his time to dispense clothing, food and gotten until December 2007, when some advice to others struggling to survive on people from Project 50—a Los Angeles the streets. County effort to help the 50 homeless “A lot of people are inspired by me. I tell people most likely to die within a year— them you have to want it and work at it— showed him a photo of a bleary-eyed, dis- one day at a time. If you fall, no one’s going oriented man with a sleeping bag. Barely to blame you for that. Just get back up. I recognizing himself, Kenneth agreed fell plenty of times, but there was always to take shelter at a supportive housing someone there through this program to program that includes a team of outreach help me get back on my feet.” More than 70% of Project 50 clients who received substance use treatment from Didi Hirsch became abstinent or actively involved in treatment after receiving housing. WELLNESS PROGRAM Depression has been linked to an increased risk of death from heart disease and cancer. Kathy Diradoorian was 9 when she first treats victims of abuse and violent crime.

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