The Pine Woods Retreat newsletter provides updates on their new programming directions, staff, and recent activities. They have expanded services to include intensive outpatient and partial hospitalization programs to better serve those with serious mental illness. Staff have undergone extensive training in areas like CPR, crisis intervention, and insurance billing. Additionally, Pine Woods was awarded a $25,000 grant for a van to provide transportation support to clients in their partial hospitalization program.

1. PINE WOODS RETREAT
MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
NEWSLETTER
FALL QUARTER 2009
A NOTE FROM JANE …
I know it has been a long time, too long, since you have received a
Newsletter from us. We have thought about you but we have been
spending so much time on programming that we just have not taken the
time to write. The purpose of today’s Newsletter is to ask you to forgive
our lack of correspondence, share our new programming direction and
bring you up-to-date on the exciting changes at Pine Woods. I think
Pine Woods Retreat you will be pleased with our new direction. We’ve had some time to
Mental Health Services really think about where we are going, and what the community needs.
serves individuals with I think you’ll find Pine Woods Retreat is right on track!
serious and persistent
mental illness. Jane Nangle, Board President
Contact us if someone
you know needs help.
1149 Cornell Avenue,
Mental Health Update from NAMI Savannah
Ste. 3A SUMMIT BRINGS INADEQUATE SERVICES INTO FOCUS
Savannah, GA 31406
www.info@pinewoodsretreat.org
912.354.7447 For a little over a year now NAMI Georgia and NAMI Savannah have
been jointly working with mental health professionals, state officials,
business leaders and hundreds of stakeholders in Southeast Georgia to
GIVE A $$ $ GIFT develop a comprehensive report highlighting the broken mental health
system in Region 5. Chatham County is in Region 5.
TODAY...
Region 5 encompasses 44 counties in Southeast Georgia and has a
A little CAN MAKE population of over 1.1 million people. Over 340,000 Georgians live with
A BIG mental illness, and in Region 5 almost 47,000 live without services.
The report, RESPONSE TO THE CRISIS, Opening the Doors to Recovery
DIFFERENCE!! is a comprehensive 50-page report examining Georgia’s mental health
912.354.7447 care crisis. It was presented in Summit format to community members
and interested stakeholders last month. The report identifies 13 gaps in
Region 5’s current services resulting in keeping the system underfunded
INSIDE THIS ISSUE and seriously mentally ill adults underserved. The report makes 22
suggested directives to provide intensive services to help keep adults
New Direction
mentally stable, living in the community, managing their symptoms and
Meet Our Staff medications in order to avoid hospitalizations, jail or homelessness.
Since Last Time Please take the time to read the report at www.nami-savannah.org,
click on the link at the end of the Report on War to End Recidivism.
$25,000 Grant We have a mental health care system that does not work but before we
affect change we have to understand what it is going to take to fix it.

2. Just for fun...
WHAT IS YOUR BRAIN MADE OF?
The brain is made of about 100 billion nerve cells.
From the 100 billion neurons in the brain, the galaxy has the same number of stars.
It looks similar to a blob of grayish-pink jelly with a wrinkly surface, divided into sections.
Blood vessels carry oxygen and nutritive substance to the brain cells and also remove waste.
The skull is the bone that protects the brain. There is also, tissue-like skin and liquid that is a barrier between
the brain and skull.
When you’re born your brain only weighs 3/4 of a pound or 350-400g. An adult brain weighs about 3 pounds
or 1300-1400g.
Albert Einstein’s brain actually weighed less than the average brain, weighing in at 2.71 pounds or 1,230g.
Now, I bet you wish your brain was smaller.
Did you know that when a woman is pregnant, the baby’s brain is growing so quickly at one stage, the tiny
brain is producing a quarter of a million new baby neurons every minute! That is why an expectant mother
gets so tired, she’s building her baby the world’s most sophisticated supercomputer!
Savannah, GA 31406
1149 Cornell Ave., Ste. 3A
Mental Health Services
Pine Woods Retreat

3. PINE WOODS RETREAT
MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
NEWSLETTER
FALL QUARTER 2009
NEW DIRECTION RESPONDS TO MEET THE STAFF
COMMUNITY NEEDS
E
very day in Chatham each week. PHP includes
and its surrounding therapeutic and educational
counties 47,000 peo- groups, cognitive and behav-
ple with mental ill- ioral training, goal setting,
ness go untreated. group processes, and prob-
It has always been the goal of lem solving and anger man- C.J. Washington, Executive Director
Pine Woods to provide adults agement classes.
with serious and persistent PHP clients are actively work-
mental illness, “SMI,” the very ing on their recovery during
best possible care by filling in the day and then returning
the gaps of the current mental home to their families in the
health system. evenings allowing them to
Lisa Seago, LPC, Clinical Manager
We’ve come to realize there maintain important family and
are two services we can best community ties.
provide right here in the city, As you can see by adjusting
intensive outpatient as well as our programming to include a
partial hospitalization services partial hospitalization pro-
Intensive outpatient services, gram as well as intensive out-
“IOP,” are services provided patient services, we are truly Jennette Hill, RN, Medical Manager
by the Pine Woods profes- serving many adults whose
sional team and include psy- lives are negatively impacted
chiatric evaluations conducted by their mental illness.
by our psychiatrist or our li- Clients at Pine Woods are
censed therapist, individual or Learning to Live by working a
group counseling, group and dynamic program designed
family therapies, marriage specifically to aid in recovery Lisa Breitberg, MFT, Therapist
counseling, medication and from serious and persistent
illness education, and psycho- mental illness.
social rehabilitation.
Partial hospitalization, “PHP,”
is comprehensive, intense out-
patient services structured like
an inpatient hospital program. Judy Schuknecht, Recovery Coordinator
It is designed specifically to
offer an SMI client the support
he/she needs to prevent future
hospitalizations.
PHP consists of intensive
group psychotherapy four There are too many faces hidden in the shadows of
hours each day, five days mental illness. Photo by Jeremy 2009
Nora Joslyn, Financial Administrator

4. PINE WOODS RETREAT
MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
NEWSLETTER
FALL QUARTER 2009
WHAT WE’VE BEEN UP TO SINCE LAST YOU HEARD FROM US
I
n some ways it’s almost impossible to catch you up on EVERY-
THING we’ve been doing since you last heard from us but we’ll
try our best. Staff has been engaged in intensive and extensive
training. Staff members have become Red Cross certified in CPR
and First Aid. Any one of us can save a life in an emergency
situation as well as bandage a wound. (See photo)
We’ve also had the opportunity to be trained and become certified in
Nonviolent Crisis Prevention Intervention. CPI is a best-practices ap-
proach utilizing a nonviolent technique to work with adults with SMI.
This training facilitates the care, welfare, safety and security of both Staff takes turns on Judy’s “broken” arm!
the client and the staff during what may be a potential crisis situation.
We are working on mountains of forms and filling out paperwork by the tons and learning so much
new information that our brains are bulging in order to become eligible for Medicare and private in-
surance reimbursement.
Monford D. & Lucy L. Custer Foundation Awards Pine Woods Retreat $25,000
Pine Woods Retreat mentally/emotionally ing to arrange f or the very difficult
has been awarded a stable following psy- daily transportation. choice between trying
$25,000 grant by the chiatric hospitalization. to get to work or trying
Monford D. & Lucy L. Often a family cannot PHP works in a com- to get a family mem-
Custer Foundation. find a program within munity setting be- ber to group therapy.
The gift is earmarked driving distance and cause it is the health We’ll go right to their
for purchase of a by necessity must look care option that com- door and pick them up
12-passenger van. for a treatment facility bines the best facets in the morning and
in another state to get of inpatient care (strict take them home at
the services needed criteria and intensive the end of the day.”
There are currently no for their loved one. care) with the best of
other “step-down” outpatient care
programs in Savannah The Monford D. & Lucy L.
(schedule flexibility
for an adult discharged With the addition of a Custer Foundation was es-
and lower costs).
from intensive inpatient 12-passenger van we tablished by the children of
hospitalization. Pine can provide transpor- Monford D. and his wife, Lucy
Woods provides their tation to and from Pine “We are absolutely L. as a way to continue the
clients with a highly Woods, which allows a thrilled the Custer philanthropic work begun by
structured treatment family member to get Foundation chose us,”
their parents. In 1947, Dr.
program designed to the help he/she de- said C.J. Washington,
allow a client to live at serves while alleviat- e xe c u t i ve d i re c t o r. Custer launched a successful
home while working ing the burden many “This means families medical career in Winchester,
toward becoming more families face when try- won’t have to make VA. which spanned 34 years.