
Elijah Levy, Ph.D.
Educator, Author, Trainer and Consultant to Health Care and Mental Health Organizations
Your vision reveals the distance you must cover
I provide consultation to organizations interested in launching their business initiatives to
improve organizational performance and operate optimally through genuine,
desired and enduring change.
I have been teaching in the undergraduate and graduate school of business at University of Redlands the last 30 years. My doctorate degree in clinical psychology enabled me to function as a clinical and program director in inpatient psychiatric programs where I developed my leadership and managerial skills. I understand organizational behavior, employee motivation and how to create work environments that pull for the best in employees. Together we can improve organizational performance through systematic analysis of existing organizational processes and developing specific plans for improvement. The multidisciplinary nature of organizational behavior reflects employee attitudes, values, capabilities and learning capacities.
Unless you act on your ideas to maximize organizational performance, your employees and organization will continue to operate at the just good enough level and the gap between current and optimal performance will widen
For your organization to function optimally, management is tasked with creating outstanding work teams and departments that can effectively respond to your customer's varied needs in domestic and global markets. Managers must be skilled at coordinating work efforts through designing structures that sustain stable relationships and processes.
In addition, I offer training to health care/mental health care organizations invested in training their health care providers to become culturally and linguistically competent providers. Since health care providers are at higher risk for developing compassion fatigue, I conduct self-care training to engender self-awareness in health care providers to establish and maintain healthy, wellness lifestyles.
For a no fee consultation, please email or
call me at (562) 230-3334
Testimonials
Is Your Organization Operating at the "Just Good Enough" Level
Health Care Organizations: Train Your Employees to Become Culturally and Linguistically Competent Health Care Providers
Dr. Levy is a deeply thoughtful, caring individual who encourages and inspires all who come in contact with him to pursue their aspirations with conviction and courage. He emphasizes high ethical standards, critical thinking, and respect for diversity. His concern for the needs and well-being of others is rare and genuine. I am and will always be extremely grateful for the support and guidance he has provided me.
Dan
I had the good fortune of meeting Elijah when I applied for an adjunct teaching position at the University of Redlands. The university assigned him conduct my in-person interview and teaching demonstration. I had limited teaching experience at the time and, were it not for Elijah's calming, encouraging demeanor, I might not have performed well and, as a result, may have decided teaching was not for me. He was (and is) a model of intellectual vigor tempered with authentic humility and empathy that I took with me when engaging with my students in the years to come. I am deeply thankful to have met him at that critical stage in my personal and professional journey and know that the impact I have had the opportunity to make in the lives of my students is in part due to his influence on me.
Jeremy
Courses/Training
Teambuilding: You, Me & Them Becomes an Awesome Us

Becoming a Culturally Competent Health Care Provider

Why Self-Care Matters

Life Coaching

Developing Outstanding Managerial Skills


Capture the Beauty of Recovery

Recovery is only possible when faith in self, hope and a commitment to reclaiming your genuine life is made. Anything is possible when self-determination, self-confidence and supports and resources are available to you.
Elijah Levy

Your entire donation supports the psychosocial rehabilitation program that enhances our resident's quality of life.

Trucare Foundation for Mental Health Recovery
A 501 (c) (3) nonprofit foundation dedicated to supporting the psychosocial rehabilitation program, services and supports to restore meaningful living to individuals living with severe, persistent mental health conditions in our residential care facilities.
The facilities supported by the foundation include: Founders House of Hope, Woodruff Care Home, The Chateau, Bay Breeze Care,
Windsor Hall, New Horizon Lodge
We Achieve Epic Things
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Residents have written books of poetry
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Filmed a documentary about our program
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Provided occupational preparation enabling residents to work in community
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Discharged residents to independent living
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Supported residents in their academic pursuits to earn certificates/degrees

Recovery from mental illness is a process ending with righteous splendor; restoring meaningful living; the joy of returning to your authentic self.
Founders House of Hope is a 90-bed residential care facility providing psychosocial rehabilitation programing for consumers living with Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders and Mood Disorders. Residents are admitted to Founders from inpatient psychiatric programs in Los Angeles and Orange County, in addition to the VA in Long Beach and Los Angeles.
We are a capacity building program -- achieving this through skill acquisition groups such as illness management, self-esteem building, health and wellness, relapse prevention, resiliency building and community reintegration. Increasing functional capacity means residents learn to manage and control their mental health condition and leading a satisfying life once discharged from Founders.
The services/groups provided by Dr. Levy at Founders House of Hope include the following:
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Supported Employment * Hope and Optimism
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Assertion Training * Vocational Rehabilitation
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Social Skills Training * Self-Esteem Building
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Impulse Control * Building Resilience
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Relapse Prevention * Illness Management
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Community Reintegration * Social Problem Solving
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Creative Expression (poetry writing, art) * Medication Education
The psychosocial rehabilitation program and skill building groups are designed to increase our resident's functional capacity to manage their illness, increase overall level of functioning, build self-determination and enhance quality of life. Each resident lists their rehabilitation/recovery goals on their treatment plan and the services and supports essential to pursuing their goals are provided. We can provide information or refer the resident to agencies for pursuing transitional housing and employment so the resident can lead a satisfying life in their community of choice.
The program goals include building self-empowerment, self-determination and self-sustenance. Our consumers tend to feel neglected and socially isolated making it difficult to generate a positive evaluation/self-concept. The focus of the program is identifying capabilities and interests, developing vocational skills, consumer strength and instilling optimism and hope that they can create a meaningful life and future. The services represent reservoirs of hope. All elements of the program contribute to creating a therapeutic milieu and environment of social caring. A unique model of self-empowerment and reinforcement for effective decision making leading to increased life satisfaction is promoted in daily programming.
Our task at Founders is not monumental. We make investments in residents motivated to recover meaningful living -- which means we’re a restorative program. We restore life a resident enjoyed before being diagnosed with a mental health condition. Living with conditions on the Schizophrenia Spectrum or Bipolar Disorder reduces one to a shell of who one was. Our task is to fill the shell with what was emptied such as work, relationships, reuniting with family, an apartment, leisure and hobbies and school. We do relatively well here -- given that the resident agrees to pursue meaningful goals aimed at restoring what the illness took away. We restore a voice taken away from the resident -- partner with residents to provide the services, supports and resources to generate meaning and purpose. Our residents learn to ask the questions that matter the most to their life -- and when they do we’re more likely to intimately understand what matters to them the most. We’ve got fertile soil here at Founders -- it’s my metaphor for saying once we plant you here, we’ll add water and nutrients for you to blossom.
Living with Schizophrenia means enduring cognitive intrusions such as auditory hallucinations, delusions and paranoia. Our residents need to be liberated from these sensory disturbances because we derive our sense of being human from our experiences and ability to act -- to make our own decisions and pursuing goals we desire. Doing so nurtures our sense of personhood. Psychosis -- such as delusions, hallucinations and disorganized thinking produces a vacuum of personal identity -- the shell we spoke of earlier. Add powerful forces such as stigma to do battle with -- and discrimination when searching for work or an apartment; devaluation and the resident internalizing the idea that he/she is “Other” than the dominant population. In the end -- these forces can defeat one and have the resident surrender to their condition. We need to destigmatize mental illness by being advocates and helping remove myths that shroud Schizophrenia. Stigma has people living with mental health conditions feel irredeemably tainted -- devalued and marginalized. Our work here is to validate each resident’s fundamental personhood and support them in reconstructing a self and life. We do real good in this area. We begin to do this with genuine empathy -- without it nothing is achieved. Empathy is your capacity to take the role of the other --it’s asking the resident: “Tell me what it’s like to be you” Doing so conveys to the resident I am genuinely interested in trying to understand cognitively, and emotionally how you experience your condition and how it’s interrupted your life.

One of our program accomplishments is a book /anthology of poetry that residents of Founders wrote in 2014 and a documentary we made in 2007.
In this collection of poetry, individuals living with mental illness convey in an intimate, evocative and vivid style their longing for acceptance, meaning and recovery. The therapeutic benefits for the mentally ill writing poetically is a journey of self-discovery and the writing process organizes and clarifies their situation in life. For the mentally ill, writing poetically by using imagery and metaphor is a safe passage to reclaim who one was before the illness emerged. The metaphor relies on an analogy or symbol to create new meaning by expanding the imaginative mind that ultimately pushes one into a new reality that generates insight. The metaphor is fascinating because of its power to silently express a complete picture in an instant. Individuals living with symptoms of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder are a vessel of truth and writing poetically about suffering transforms that truth in a way that makes it meaningful and amenable to healing. What is dormant, and undoubtedly shameful to disclose is awakened, and although it describes the limitations the illness imposes in their lives, it energizes one to act in some way to heal the pain, overcome and defeat ongoing devaluation, loneliness, stigmatization and alienation. In the end, it is hope that gives life meaning and sustains faith for the good life. Without hope, one lives in despair and futility. Meaning gives one the strength to overcome. The evocative nature of poetry transforms silence, alienation and insignificance to sound. The mentally ill live in their safe, beautiful, intimate and private world. The written word-- the poem, allows one to share this experience in a public forum for others to identify with and ultimately connect them to the larger world to reduce alienation and increase integration. At some level, the healthy mind will invariably understand the depth of suffering and through empathy, the ability to take the role of the other, appreciate and render compassion to the mentally ill.

In this illuminating, intimate documentary portraying individuals with schizophrenia and mental illness, viewers witness how the mentally ill are managing their illness and leading self-directed lives at Founders House of Hope, a residential care programs for the mentally ill. The documentary is remarkably honest as it follows residents sharing how their broken lives have been reconstituted at Founders. The courage and defiance to not surrender to their illness is revealed when a resident celebrates the publication of his autobiography titled Beyond Psychosis. In powerful candor, residents share how mental illness has not taken their life away, but presented complex challenges enabling them to discover more about themselves and their resilience. Misconceptions about mental illness will be corrected in this documentary and the effects of being marginalized and socially stigmatized will be appreciated in an acute way by viewers. The film’s existential elements reveal how residents draw meaning and purpose in life from the psychosocial rehabilitation activities at Founders. The pull for their creative expression in metaphor, and in the form of art, poetry and songwriting reveals in a magnificent, authentic medium how life is forever altered by incurable mental illness. A resident in the film sums up his life through the title of his poem Tamed with Understanding.