Crestwood Behavioral Health

11/23/2025

Love on a Leash: Bringing Healing through Compassionate Pet Therapy at Crestwood San Diego

Love on a Leash is a compassionate, nonprofit organization that promotes emotional healing and wellness through volunteer pet therapy. At Crestwood San Diego, Love on a Leash volunteers bring companionship, comfort, and joy to everyone. These visits encourage a therapeutic atmosphere in which individuals can foster a sense of healing connection with therapy animals. The pets help release emotional tension and provide a sense of emotional support that is often needed, helping individuals feel understood and accepted.

The use of animals in therapy helps improve mood and relieve stress. Research has shown that individuals interacting with therapy animals experience a decrease in stress-related hormones and an increase in endorphins and serotonin, helping to combat depression and anxiety (Jimenez, 2022). Simple activities, such as petting a dog and interacting with an animal in any way, can have a profoundly positive and calming influence, helping to improve mental well-being.

Additionally, Pet Therapy assists in the rehabilitation of confidence and social skills. Individuals who experience feelings of isolation or low self-worth may find that a connection with an animal serves as an emotional bridge, sparking meaningful communication and empathy. Animals offer companionship that is free from judgment, allowing individuals to express their feelings without restrictions. This emotional support also extends beyond the therapy sessions, inspiring participants to engage with their peers and become more involved in everyday activities.

The therapy pets come not just to bring joy to Crestwood San Diego, and the people we serve, but also to bring healing and hope to those in need. Their visits create a sense of relaxation, bonding, and optimism, allowing participants to enhance their emotional resilience, heal, and experience enduring positive effects on their overall mental health.

11/21/2025

The Alliance for Rights and Recovery Annual Conference

Greg Parnell, Crestwood Director of Recovery, Education, Advocacy and Leadership, attended The Alliance for Rights and Recovery Annual Conference in Callicoon, New York from September 29 – October 1, 2025.

One of the Keynote Speakers was Pat Deegan, PhD, who spoke about the history of the Peer Movement and things we need to continue doing in the face of adversity to keep the Movement strong. It was truly an honor for Greg to meet one of his Peer Heroes whose article, “Recovery as a Journey of the Heart” (1996), was a great inspiration to him.

Greg presented his workshop, “Disruption, Discovery and Balance: Finding Balance in Lived Experience & Telling Your Story for Peer Support.” In this interactive and inspiring workshop, attendees explored key areas of personal wellness, including Self-Discovery; Health & Nutrition; Education & Employment; Spirituality; Recreation/Re-Creation; and Relationships, all in a peer-led environment. As in years past, Greg was also invited to lead Zumba sessions for attendees, which is always a big hit!

11/19/2025

Dietary Department Celebration at Idylwood Care Center!

The Dietary Department at Idylwood Care Center had a fun-filled day celebrating Healthcare Foodservice Workers Week (October 5 - 11)! We proudly wore our new cooking and baking t-shirts for a celebratory group photo. The appreciation event also included Noah's Bagel sandwiches for the team, with managers sharing their sincere gratitude for the hard work our department does to make sure our residents receive the best nutritious meals every day.

11/16/2025

Santa Barbara Out of the Darkness Community Walk!

Crestwood was proud to sponsor the American Foundation for Su***de Prevention's Santa Barbara Out of the Darkness Community Walk on October 4. Staff from Crestwood's Champion Healing Center participated in the event. It was truly a beautiful and impactful experience, walking together along the beach and through the UCSB campus, surrounded by a sense of hope, connection and community! There were a few speakers who shared their stories of loss, strength and healing. It reminded us of why it is so important to talk about mental health and to support one another! We had the opportunity to choose beads that represented our personal connections to su***de. It was a simple but powerful way to honor loved ones and show our support! It definitely was an emotional and inspiring day, and we are so grateful we were able to experience it together as a team!

11/15/2025

NAMIWalks San Luis Obispo County!

This is the second year that Crestwood has participated in the San Luis Obispo County NAMIWalks (October 4) and each year it gets better! It is so wonderful to be a part of a community that is passionate about mental health and bringing not only awareness but support to those that need it. It is a breath of fresh air to be among other like-minded organizations who are so passionate about helping others. SLO truly is an amazing county to collaborate with!

11/14/2025

Zumba Summit 2025!

The Zumba Summit (August 26 – 28) was an incredible event! Two days of learning, connection, choreography & fun!! Having Annalisa Brown, Zumba Jammer® and Eliza Stone, ZES® Zumba Education Specialist & Nutritionist there was so amazing!

Annalisa did a ZIN Jam where she taught us 4 choreographies, and Eliza and Greg taught cueing drills and a Seated Gold Class. Everyone was so engaged. Eliza also taught a Nutrition segment that was very informative.

The evening Karaoke was incredibly fun and it was priceless to see everyone just let go and be silly. It was wonderful to be able to see everyone from all over the state connect, share successes and challenges, share ideas, and be inspired!

11/13/2025

A Message from Patty Blum, Crestwood Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President

Humility in Leadership

Many of us look for leaders in our work and community by searching for someone who is charismatic, visionary, or extraordinary in some specific area or field. However, as we look at what makes a leader remarkable, it is not usually those characteristics. Research shows us that what makes a leader able to motivate and inspire is humility (Forbes 2023).

The research by Bradley Owens, Professor of Business Ethics at Brigham Young University, found that teams with leaders ranked as more humble performed better. Many researchers have had similar results. Dr. Franziska Frank found that more than 95 percent of employees want a humble leader, and more than 97 percent of managers want to be one. She writes in her book "The Power of Humility in Leadership" that humility in leaders benefits the employees, the organization and the managers by expanding their sense of humility. A New York Times reviewer found that Dr. Frank, “makes a convincing case that humility in leadership is a source of strength and not a sign of weakness and that it benefits an organization’s ecosystem.”

The Oxford Review reviewed the concept and found that the research of J.A. Morris, C.M. Brotheridge and J. Urbanski determined that humility comprises of three key elements of:

1. Self-awareness or the ability to be able to understand one’s own strengths and weaknesses from a more objective and external standpoint.
2. Openness or a willingness to explore and take on new ideas, thinking, knowledge and behaviors in the light of external evidence.
3. Transcendence or the ability to be able to move away from one’s subjective perspective and take on an inclusive and more objective perspective of both themselves and the context.

These are not easy ingredients, yet they are attainable, and we have the ability to expand our humility. Dr. Frank outlines four steps to becoming a humble leader.

1. Ensure you know your strengths and weaknesses and practice showing them.

* Get regular feedback from your team - either in meetings where everyone can share open and direct feedback, surveys or 360 degree feedback forms.
* Share your strengths and weaknesses with your team. Identify areas where someone else’s skills can complement yours and ask for help. People who ask for advice are considered competent and give the person being asked a sense of accomplishment.

2. Be willing to learn.

* Lifelong learning is a key part of having a growth mindset, the belief that your talents and abilities can be further developed—and the will to actively seek new opportunities to learn.

3. Show your appreciation of your colleagues.

* Train yourself to truly see what others do and deliver. Give clear and concrete feedback to peers, employees, and even bosses (yes, they are people, too!) about how and when they have helped you.

4. Keep the bigger picture in mind.

* A successful leader understands empowerment for the bigger picture. Setting the course and involving many in establishing the direction and actions for an organization increases the optimal outcome.

Dr. Frank summarizes that becoming a humble leader relieves some of the management burden by freeing leaders from having to know everything and instead enabling them to achieve their goals via motivated employees. At Crestwood, we see humble leaders in all our service areas and at all of our campuses, including the people we serve. Practicing humble leadership benefits our whole Crestwood family and is an important cornerstone of our organization that shapes our values and allows us to be the best leaders we can be.

11/11/2025

Check out the New York Times article that features our San Francisco Geary Stabilization Unit!

The article focuses on making San Francisco’s streets safer by creating new programs and services for people in crisis to help address mental health and substance use issues. The Geary SU may now serve as a model program for other communities across the country!

A former Goodwill thrift store now houses an urgent care clinic for people experiencing mental health breakdowns in public.

11/11/2025

Thank You to all our veterans and military families for your dedication and service to our country!

10/30/2025

Crestwood's Peer Support Workforce

"Taking a Crash Course in Recovery Listening Skills"
by Chris Martin, Crestwood Sr. Director of Learning and Performance

You can scan through any college course catalog and find numerous courses on speaking, such as health communication, organizational communication, public speaking, argumentation, debate, etc. But it won’t be often when you can find a course in listening. So, because listening is a key skill in recovery work, this might be a great time to take a free crash course. Read through the following ten recovery listening skills and take the quiz afterwards.

1. Be Present and Pleasant: Do a mindfulness activity to get fully present and present a welcoming attitude.
2. Start with the Heart: Connect to the person on the personal (heart) level while assuming positive regard and empathy for them and their concerns.
3. Turn on the Utility of Humility: Take on the attitude that the person is there to teach you something or provide you with new important information.
4. Assign the Time: Set or agree upon the time for the person’s sharing. For example, you could say, “I have some time for you to share what’s been happening with you, and then it will be important for me to ask you some follow up questions. Does that work for you?"
5. Detect to Reflect: Discern the person’s feelings, needs, and/or concerns and reflect these back to them to ensure you got it right.
6. Suspend the Agenda: Set aside preconceived judgements that you know all about the situation and/or know how to fix it, i.e., “I’ve been there done that.”
7. Clear the Mirror: See the person in the full, positive light of who they are in the moment, not through a lens of who they were yesterday or from the days before.
8. Center the Locus of Focus: Keep the focus on the person and what they are saying.
9. Listen Actively, Not “Didactically”: Maintain a reverence for silence as the person is sharing and resist interrupting or one upping.
10. Make a Pact to Act: Conclude with a plan of action to address and validate the person’s feelings, needs, or concerns. The plan might just be an agreement on an adjustment of expectations or attitude. It’s important to the people we serve, our colleagues, and for our recovery culture that we, as recovery responders, are not hearers only but also doers.

Alright, please put your pens and hi-lighters down. Now that you’ve taken the course, you’ll find your quiz scores in your relationship outcomes with the people you serve and your co-workers.

10/23/2025

Community Resiliency Model (CRM) at CASRA

On September 10, three of Crestwood’s CRM Teachers had the pleasure of presenting a 90-minute Community Resiliency Model (CRM) Overview at the CASRA Conference in Oakland, CA. Over 40 Behavioral Health Professionals from across California attended what quickly became a standing-room-only session.

The presentation focused on the three core skills of CRM, emphasizing the importance of utilizing our own resiliency to support ourselves through challenging moments. The group was energized and engaged as we shared concepts and practices that foster wellness.

We were especially proud to showcase how Crestwood incorporates CRM tools to support both the individuals we serve and our employees’ wellness—truly the icing on the cake! Representing Crestwood and helping to spread CRM within other Behavioral Health communities was an honor and a rewarding experience.

10/16/2025

A Message from Patty Blum, Crestwood Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President

Commitment 2025

Commitment is defined as the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity, or belief. Commitment is one of our Values at Crestwood and we have defined it as, “Follow through is basic. Crestwood is uncompromising in our commitment to quality and expertise. We are firm in our commitment to socially responsible business practices and community responsiveness.”

Throughout our 57 years, Crestwood has demonstrated our commitment every day to the people we serve; to the people we employ; communities; counties; businesses that we partner with; to the environment in which we operate; and to the fiscal sustainability of providing the highest quality of behavioral health services. We have done so by never veering from our Values and Recovery Pillars. Crestwood has maintained the pledge to provide exemplary accredited services to the most disenfranchised population in California.

Crestwood’s commitment is to create a continuum of services that empower our persons served to live and succeed in their communities. This has been demonstrated through the growth based on community needs. Crestwood has worked with counties to develop new services, design new programs and open new sites in areas where they are most needed. This year, Crestwood’s commitment to diversifying services includes adding the voluntary Crisis Stabilization Unit at Geary Street in San Francisco. And later this Fall, we will be opening the Selma Wellness Center, our first Justice-Informed MHRC. We have partnered with the Department of State Hospitals to open this program with the focus on restoration services, while growing the Co-Occurring Recovery (COR) service model across our organization. Crestwood’s commitment to California communities is as strong today as it was when our organization began and we will continue to keep growing and honoring it well into the future.