Dr. Frank Bartolomeo, Senior Clinical Advisor, Adolescent Services, at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, will speak to us on the mental health crisis facing adolescents in America today. As we have seen in recent years, there has been a serious increase in depression and anxiety among adolescents and young adults, viewed from virtually all measures. A high percentage of college students are burdened with anxieties that interfere with their daily functioning. The number of visits by children and young adults to emergency rooms for suicidal ideation has increased significantly. And rates of depression have gone up dramatically.
For Dr. Bartolomeo, time is of the essence: “I am driven by the knowledge that if we can intervene in a teen crisis today to help build resilience, we may prevent longer term suffering.” Increasing resilience to Dr. Bartolomeo means having the capacity to bounce back from adversity through the support of meaningful relationships with friends, family or community. It has been a guiding principle for Dr. Bartolomeo over the course of his 30-year career working with 13- to 18-year-olds, as well as emerging adults ages 18 to 29. “And hand-in-hand with restoring that sense of connectedness,” he says, “is helping adolescents develop skills to cope with life on life’s terms.”
“Adolescence is a time of great vulnerability,” Dr. Bartolomeo says, “but also presents an opportunity to reduce the likelihood of teenage conditions continuing into adulthood.” In addition to his work with adolescents at Silver Hill, he provides group therapy at Steward House, the program for executives and high-profile individuals.
Frank comes from a large Italian-Irish family and grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Massachusetts. He is a first-generation college graduate. He received his B.A. in History from University of Massachusetts Amherst and studied abroad at the University of London. Unable to find a job teaching history, he found himself working at a residential program for profoundly disturbed children. Subsequently, he earned his Masters of Social Work degree from Boston University and his Ph.D. in Social Work from Simmons University in Boston. His doctoral research focused on the use of group therapy with resistant teenagers.
Throughout his career, Frank has been passionate about the healing power of groups. For the first 15 years of his career, Frank worked primarily in the public sector, first with adjudicated gang members for Boston’s inner-city. In 2005, he was introduced to the world of private behavioral healthcare and became the Clinical Director, then Executive Director of a private therapeutic boarding school in the Berkshires for troubled adolescents from affluent families. Dr. Bartolomeo was struck by the similarities in behaviors between adolescents across the socio-economic spectrum. Counter-intuitively, affluence has been found to be a risk factor for adolescent depression, anxiety, and substance abuse.
A frequent speaker at the local and national level, Frank volunteers as a consulting editor for the Journal of the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama. His most recent scholarly publication (2022) was a co-authored book chapter: Bartolomeo, F., Stafford, A., & Gerber, A. (2022). Emerging Adulthood: A review of developmental perspectives. In Z. Kahn & J. Martinez (Eds.), Emerging adults in therapy. (pp. 3 -19). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Arranged by Tom Igoe
DMA member Jim Cameron, long-time commuter advocate and newspaper commentator, will speak to us on Connecticut’s transportation future: Will riders ever return to commuter rail? Who will pay to keep the trains running when Federal money is gone? Where will money be found to repair our highways? How will new residential/workplace trends affect Connecticut’s economy? Jim will explore the options in an engaging, thought-provoking workshop with plenty of time to hear your ideas and answer your questions.
DMA member Ted Helms will speak with our group about the startling demise of Venezuela in his presentation entitled “Venezuela – A Failed State: Story of the Road to Destruction.” As Ted observes, it is not widely understood or appreciated just how rich and developed Venezuela was, including the wealth of its resource base, and the abject condition in which it currently finds itself. Large numbers of people, representing 25% of its population, have fled the country in desperation, with entire families walking as far as Chile or the United States, literally to escape starvation. Today, Venezuela is arguably a failed state with no foreseeable possibility of returning to its prosperous and democratic past. Based on his first-hand experience, Ted will highlight the root causes of Venezuela’s road to ruin, and why, under any plausible scenario, its future remains bleak.
Mark Contreras, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Connecticut Public and a member of the board of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), will speak to us on the role of public television in the State of Connecticut.
David Genovese, who leads Baywater Properties, a privately held commercial real estate company serving Fairfield and Westchester Counties, will provide us with an update on the progress of the Corbin District Project, a major undertaking involving the development of a series of new buildings, shops, residential facilities and public community spaces in the heart of Darien that will forever transform and enliven the character of our Town.
DMA member and past president Sunil Saksena will speak to our group on the presidential election of 1876. That election was marred by claims of fraud, voter intimidation, arbitrarily changed vote counts and multiple sets of “certified” electoral college votes. It was followed by 4 months of chaotic negotiations and backroom compromises involving Congressional committees, Supreme Court Justices and campaign representatives. Finally, just 2 days before Inauguration Day, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner by 1 electoral vote over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, who won the popular vote by a huge margin.
Vanessa Maczko is a Partner in Wiggin and Dana’s Private Client Services Department in the Greenwich, CT office. She will brief our group on important recent developments in federal and Connecticut trusts and estates laws that affect estate planning, wills and trusts, distribution of assets to beneficiaries and charitable giving.
John Lindback will speak with our group on the topic of elections administration, voter registration and the possibilities of voter fraud. John first entered the field of elections administration in 1995 and has made it his personal goal for the past 27 years to make voter registration and voting work better for both voters and election officials.
DMA member Flemming Heilmann will discuss his recently released translation of Halfdan Lefevre’s book entitled The Men in Denmark’s Freedom Council. This seminal work, first published in Danish in 1945, is the story of Denmark’s resistance leaders, their underground movement during Nazi occupation and how they coordinated the nation’s freedom fighters to mount military confrontation of the enemy. Their 11-member Freedom Council went on to form a government-in-waiting in anticipation of liberation to run the country pending restoration of democratic elections. Each member’s family background and career are vividly depicted. Lefevre, from the start of World War II, had documented the genesis and evolution of the resistance movement and its struggle against Nazi occupation since April 1940. He was the recording scribe for the underground Freedom Council and author of illegal leaflets and news communiques distributed by the resistance. His scholarly account offers details of the German invasion, the government’s quick surrender, and then the emergence of the resistance movement, which led to the establishment of the crucial Freedom Council. Flemming has carefully translated this book into English so a broader audience can appreciate the sacrifices these brave men made for their country.
Bobbi Phelps Chapman will speak to us on her latest book, Darien Waters, which describes historical facts and dramatic details of the ‘40s, ‘50s and early ‘60s. In her narrative of growing up in Darien, she writes of wealth, secrets, schemes, and intrigue in our beautiful waterside town.
