January 19, 2007

Sharon Carpinello Resigns as New York State Mental Health Commissioner

With the ascension of Michael Hogan as New York State’s new Mental Health Commissioner, Sharon Carpinello resigned effective today.

I had the opportunity of working for her for several years when she was the Executive Deputy Commissioner of OMH. She was very dedicated to the cause of people with psychiatric disabilities and worked many long hours to that end.

She has made many positive contributions to the mental health system including her innovative work in recent years on the issues of children and adolescents in the mental health system. She was also passionate about inculcating evidenced based best practices and outcome measures to all of the public policy initiatives of the Office of Mental Health. Also, her work on suicide prevention, geriatric mental health and Project Liberty among many other initiatives was ground breaking.

We wish her the best in her future endeavors.