Gregory M. Smith
Mountaintop, Pennsylvania, USA
Biography
Mr. Smith is recognized as an international expert on psychiatric care and services specializing in nonviolent approaches to supporting people in crisis. He has published many studies on this topic and has presented at most national and international conferences on this subject. He has more than 35-years of experience in Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services as an advocate for people with special needs having worked in executive leadership positions at Embreeville Center, Pennhurst Center, Philadelphia State Hospital (Byberry), White Haven Center, Mayview State Hospital, Harrisburg State Hospital and Allentown State Hospital. In 1998, Allentown was one of the first hospitals in the nation to eliminate the use of seclusion and dramatically reduce its use of restraint. Allentown was also the first facility in the state hospital system to discontinue the use of PRN orders for psychiatric indications. He was also lead investigator of a study that was published in the October 2005 edition of the Psychiatric Services Journal titled “Pennsylvania State Hospital System’s Seclusion and Restraint Reduction Programâ€. This study has become a seminal work for hospital-based S/R reduction programs having been referenced more that 150 times. In 2008 he was lead investigator of a study titled “Psychiatric Use of Unscheduled Medication in the Pennsylvania State Hospital System: Effects of Discontinuing the Use of PRN Orders†which was published in the (August 2008) Community Mental Health Journal. This work led to the elimination of PRN orders for psychiatric indications in all Pennsylvania state hospitals, civil and forensic, on March 1, 2005. On January 15, 2010, he was contributing author of a text titled “Rights, Risks and Restraint-Free Care of Older People: Person Centered Approaches to Health and Social Care†was published by Kingsley Publishers in London, UK in conjunction with Kings College, London, UK. In October 2013 Mr. Smith received the Netherlands Johannes van Durren Award in recognition of his leadership and assistance with their work at decreasing the use of seclusion and restraint in its behavioral health systems of care. Recently, Mr. Smith was the lead investigator/corresponding author of two longitudinal studies spanning 10 years. The first examined the “Correlation between Reduction of Seclusion and Restraint on Assaults by Patients in the Pennsylvania State Hospitalsâ€. This paper was published in the March 2015 edition of the Psychiatric Services Journal. A companion study titled, “Relationship between Seclusion and Restraint Reduction on Patient Assaults in the Pennsylvania Forensic Service, 2001-2010†appeared in the December 2015 edition of the journal. Mr. Smith has provided consultative assistance to the Pennsylvania correctional system on seclusion and restraint reduction strategies and incident management and is a past faculty member of the National Technical Assistance Center (NTAC) for State Mental Health Planning. He has spoken internationally on Pennsylvania’s seclusion and restraint reduction program and currently serves as a consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) on seclusion and restraint reduction and Mental Health Recovery. Mr. Smith has a degree in Special Education from Edinboro State University and a Master’s degree in Organizational Leadership from University Misericordia, Dallas, Pennsylvania. He has taught graduate and under graduate classes in Healthcare Administration. He is currently a consultant on Psychiatric Care and Services and resides in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania.