N.Y. Hospital Holds Benefit For Its Psychiatry Department

Each year for the last 110 years Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Jamaica, N.Y., has held its Rainbow Ball fundraising event. This year’s event was a benefit for the hospital’s psychiatry department and netted $255,000.

One of the highlights of the November 10 event was the presentation of the medical center’s Mary R. Gale Award to APA President Richard Harding, M.D., for his many contributions to the field of psychiatry, including his service on the federal government’s Subcommittee on Privacy and Confidentiality. This group has been advising the Department of Health and Human Services on establishing standards for privacy of medical records transmitted electronically. (Due to a death in the family, Harding was unable to attend the award ceremony.)

The event’s other honorees were “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace and his wife, Mary. In the early 1990s the CBS veteran went public about his years of battling depression, and since that time both of the Wallaces have been tireless spokespersons on behalf of depression treatment and against the stigma often attached to it.

Harding told Psychiatric News that he believes the medical center selected him for the award “as a representative of the psychiatric profession, which has been on the frontlines of helping many communities, including the community the hospital serves, cope with a series of tragic events in the last few years and developing the necessary treatment infrastructure that will benefit the community for the long term.”

The Jamaica Hospital psychiatry department operates two 25-bed inpatient units in addition to offering an array of individual and outpatient group services. In addition, according to a hospital press release, the psychiatry department provides $2.5 million in uncompensated care annually to the surrounding community and distributes about $150,000 in free medication to indigent patients.

The department has also formed the Interdisciplinary Disaster Response Team, which was recently called into action to assist and counsel family members of victims of the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 into a nearby neighborhood in the borough of Queens, where the hospital is located (Psychiatric News, December 7, 2001). The hospital also mobilized its mental health resources to assist after the World Trade Center attacks in nearby Manhattan and to help family members of those killed in two other airliner crashes in recent years. ▪