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Wayne Dailey
juggles numerous roles
(July
2006 Issue)
There is no rule that you have to follow convention. In fact, life
can be much more interesting if you don't.
For instance, instead of seeing patients, a licensed clinical psychologist
could be a consultant, conduct research, write pieces on terrorism
and the consequences of disaster or be on the faculty at Yale.
Connecticut's Wayne Dailey, Ph.D., does all of these things. And,
he does them all as a side to a full-time job that alone would normally
take two people to fulfill.
In a unique, dual role for the Connecticut Department of Mental
Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS), Dailey is the department's
public information officer/ spokesperson and senior policy advisor
to the commissioner and deputy commissioner. He is also an assistant
clinical professor in the department of psychology at Yale University's
School of Medicine, supervising post-doctoral fellows. And, he
has a small practice as a consultant.
With a CV that reads like a diverse menu, Dailey also has extensive
involvement in planning, establishing and evaluating mental health
programs and service systems at the local, regional and statewide
levels. He is active in the state's preparedness planning for disaster
response, serving as a member of the leadership team responsible
for organizing Connecticut's behavioral health response to major
disasters and to terrorism. It's an area where he's developed an
expertise and he has presented at the 2005 APA Convention on developing
disaster responses.
Dailey took a break from his many roles to speak with New England
Psychologist's Catherine Robertson Souter about his work and
how he's juggled so many roles.
Q: Neither of the positions you hold at DMHAS requires a degree
in psychology. How did you get into this line of work?
A: No, it's not a requirement to be a psychologist but it certainly
puts me in a position of understanding many of the issues that come
up in mental health. The position of spokesperson was filled by
a non-psychologist before me and when that person needed to get
questions answered that had subject matter content, someone else
had to step in and take care of it. The advantage of having me do
it was that I could, in many cases, answer the questions.
It's unique, how I got into this job. Albert Solnit, M.D., the
commissioner of mental health and addiction services back in 1997
asked me if I would be willing to take on the job as spokesperson
since the public information officer was retiring. I was already
acting as policy advisor. He asked me if I would cover it for three
weeks while they recruited for a new person. That was nine years
ago. Those three weeks kind of stretched out a bit.
Q: A spokesperson would mainly deal with media inquiries. What
does a senior policy advisor do?
A: I do a lot of writing on various policy matters and develop position
statements for the department. For instance, recently the legislature
specified a task force should be formed to assess the feasibility
of using Medicaid dollars to support community placements for people
with serious mental illness who are in nursing homes and I provided
the staff assistance to the task force. I wrote the feasibility
study and performed the cost analysis.
Q: How do you divide your time within the job?
A: It runs in fits and starts. The media side is based on demand.
When media-related inquiries are greater, I will devote a majority
of my time to that. The remainder of the time I spend on policy-related
issues. For instance, last week we had a busy media week. There
was a neighborhood outcry about the placement of an addictions services
support residence, NIMBY issues. When something like that is going
on you are busy on that side.
Q: Do you prefer either job?
A: I actually like both because it gives me a lot of diversity in
my work activities. Things never become boring. I find it more stimulating
and more fun professionally to have lots of different kinds of things
to be working on at the same time.
Q: What do you bring to these roles as a psychologist?
A: You don't often see a psychologist serving as a public information
officer but it's a way of decreasing the distance between the audience
and the information source. I don't have to go to other people to
get the information that I need or if I do, it's not about the subject
matter; it's more about certain details. I can talk about the concept
being addressed by a treatment program, for instance. It's useful
to understand human nature and motivation. A big part of my job
is to turn ideas into things that can be broadly understood and
used to reach a wide range of audiences.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: At DMHAS, we are working on building a recovery-oriented system
in Connecticut and being able to talk about that is an important
part of what I'm involved in. We are doing a lot of retraining of
our work force in recovery concepts. The former system was more
oriented toward symptom reduction and this is more towards rehabilitation
and support of people for community living. But, it's even more
than just community-based care - a lot of that is focused on reducing
symptoms so that they can function better in the community. Our
orientation really focuses on helping people regain a meaningful
and constructive sense of community.
Q: In addition to your work at DMHAS, you have become somewhat
of an expert on disaster response.
A: After Sept. 11, 2001, Connecticut recognized the need to expand
its capability to respond to the disaster behavioral health needs
of its citizens. The federal government also recognized the need
and provided funding to eight states plus the District of Columbia
where a majority of families of victims lived to help enhance their
disaster behavioral health capabilities.
At that time, we had to figure out what was needed where we had
different population groups that needed attention. We recognized
that their service needs would change over time and that what they
would need would change over time. So we had preparedness and response
and recovery phases to think about.
Q: How did you become an expert in this area?
A: In some cases it's been from research I've done and other times
I've worked with people who are doing large areas of development.
I've brought together the work and accomplishments and the thinking
of scores of people and put those together in presentations that
Commissioner Kirk and I have made at national meetings.
For instance, right now I'm heading to a meeting on risk communication
regarding pandemic flu. My role is to think about the behavioral
health and mental health implications of dealing with avian flu
or pandemic flu. How do we prepare ourselves and how do we improve
our resilience in coping? It's a pretty big challenge but we are
developing information that will improve public awareness and help
people think about ways to protect themselves and their families
and also do things that are pro-social. It's important that people
recognize that they can help their community while they help themselves
to respond and recover from major disasters.
One of the big things is that we see disaster behavioral health
as both helping people in natural disasters and as serving as a
counter measure to terrorism because terrorism is designed to create
a lack of confidence in society and government. By helping people
in communities to cope and recover more quickly it helps to defeat
the purpose of terrorism.
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