Supporting and Destigmatizing Those With Mental Illness

The support group, informally called “How You Feeling?” is a grassroots project of Rabbi Avram Mlotek, one of the founders of Base Hillel, home-based communities for Jewish millennials that use a rabbi’s home as a convening point for pluralistic Jewish life. Rabbi Mlotek heads Base DWTN in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. News of the support space spreads by word-of-mouth — it now has 10 to 12 regulars who meet on a monthly basis.

“It’s a place for people to come and be emotionally vulnerable with one another,” said Rabbi Mlotek, 30, a graduate of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, an Orthodox rabbinical school that stresses clinical pastoral education, or CPE, in its core curriculum. “Realizing that you are not alone in your struggle has the incredible power to comfort and heal.”

Read the full article here.

Special mention to Dr. Michelle Friedman, founder and chair of the Department of Pastoral Counseling and author of a new book on the subject.