Founded in 1974, RAMS, Inc. is a private, non-profit mental health agency that is committed to advocating for and providing community based, culturally-competent, and consumer-guided comprehensive services, with an emphasis on serving Asian & Pacific Islander Americans. RAMS is committed to reflecting the multicultural & multilingual diversity of our community.
Friday, June 25, 2010
An Update From Chloe Dao
Save The Date - July 17, 2010
This is an opportunity to meet with Congressman Mike Honda and Assemblyman Mike Eng to address the impact of mental health of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities in California. As stated in NAAPIMHA's announcement about the event: "Mental health is an issue that is frequently ignored yet impacts every aspect of our lives and is itself impacted by our physical health, employment, education, housing and immigration status. We continue to see suicide among our students, depression in our elders, and post traumatic stress disorder among our refugee and immigrant populations and co-occuring substance use disorders, yet we face challenges in having adequate resources to meet our growing needs. Please join us for this important meeting and have your voices heard. Both Congressman Honda and Assemblyman Mike Eng are very supportive of mental health and want to hear what the community has to say as we develop a statewide and national agenda to improve the overall health and well being of our community."
Registration for townhall is free at http://www.naapimha.org/

Town Hall Meeting
San Jose Buddhist Temple
640 North 5th Street, San Jose, CA
July 17, 2010
8:30am – 4:00pm
Picture from Flickr by fenchurch!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Celebrating API Cultures
This was the second time RAMS worked with APIFRN to put on this well-received training for commmunity providers; a similar training was previously done on April 8, 2010.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Advocacy at work
Waiting for hours in the hallway outside the chambers
Writing and rehearsing our words (each speaker has a 2-minute limit)
Thank you to all of our community members and fellow service providers for taking the time out of their busy schedule to speak out about the importance of social services, and to advocate for the City's most needy and underserved residents.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
RAMS Raffle & Summer Scooter Sweepstakes
Buy your tickets for a chance to win the GRAND PRIZE of a 2010 Vespa S50 Scooter, perfect for cruising around San Francisco during the warm late-summer weather! Enjoy the fresh sea air and the sights & sounds of summer as you ride around town on your new Vespa, never worrying about looking for parking spaces again! Donated by VespaSF / Cars Dawydiak, the Vespa S50 has a retail value of *$3,200, and the winner has the option of selecting from a range of classic Vespa colors. The winner also has the option of taking the $3,200 as credit, to apply to a larger Vespa scooter upgrade/purchase at the VespaSF shop.
*Vehicle tax and registration is not included in the prize value. The new owner of the Vespa shall be fully responsible for tax, registration, and all other vehicle fees as required by CA law.
The SECOND place prize is a package for a One Night Stay at the Hotel Vitale in a Deluxe City View King Room, and two tickets to the Aquarium Of The Bay at Pier 39. Spend a perfect summer day soaking up the sun at the beautiful San Francisco Embarcadero waterfront and checking out the marine life in San Francisco’s only waterfront aquarium, and end your excursion by relaxing at a luxury boutique hotel by the bay. This prize has a $452 value.

RAMS is selling raffle tickets NOW until until August 12, 2010.
- Each ticket is $5.00.
- Or, buy six (6) tickets for $25.00.
Raffle Drawing:
The Raffle Drawing will be held on Thursday, August 12, 2010 at a reception in San Francisco. You need not be present to win. More details to come.
If winners are not present at the Raffle Drawing Reception, they will be notified by phone and email (based on the contact information provided at the time of ticket purchase). The winning names will also be posted on the website shortly after the drawing.
Raffle Rules & Regulations:
• Must be 18 years old to purchase raffle tickets
• Raffle ticket purchases are not tax-deductible, per federal law.
100% of all proceeds from the RAMS Raffle & Summer Scooter Sweepstakes shall benefit RAMS and its programs.
For more information, you may contact Katelynn Luong at katelynnluong@ramsinc.org or (415) 668-5955 ext. 315.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Meet RAMS - Eddie Chiu, PhD
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Cultural Competency is our Specialty
Funded by Mental Health Services Act (MHSA), the project’s goal is to deliver 16 trainings in 2010-2011 aimed to improve the CBHS workforce’s understanding of the cultural & linguistic issues and needs that affect recovery and resil-iency, and improve access to mental health services, for the following ethnic and cultural groups: African Ameri-cans; Latinos/as; Asians and Pacific Islanders; Native Americans; Russians; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex and Questioning (LGBTQIQ) consumers; Transitional Age Youth; and Older Adults.
Due to our strengths as service providers with special focus in cultural competence with the A&PI and Russian-speaking communities, RAMS was tapped to provide two of these culturally-focused trainings: one focused on A&PI-Americans, and one focused on the Russian-speaking population.
With over 30 years of experience providing culturally competent services to the community, RAMS continues to play a key role in defining and implementing culturally competent mental health and integrated behavioral health services in San Francisco. The agency's philosophy of care reflect values that recovery & rehabilitation are more likely to occur where the mental health systems, services, and providers have and utilize knowledge and skills that are culturally competent and compatible with the backgrounds of consumers and their families and communities, at large.
Click HERE to read more about our Cultural Competence Philosophy and Practices.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Community talks in the Richmond District
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche
This year, we had the honor of having esteemed author Ethan Watters as our featured presenter. His latest book is titled "Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche", which is described as revealing that the most devastating consequence of the spread of American culture has not been our golden arches or our bomb craters but our bulldozing of the human psyche itself: We are in the process of homogenizing the way the world goes mad. He is also a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Discover, Men's Journal, Spin, Details, and Wired. A frequent contributor to NPR, Watters' work appeared in the 2007 and 2008 Best American Science and Nature Writing. He co-founded the San Francisco Writers Grotto, a work space for local artists.
He was a featured guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
Ethan Watters | ||||
http://www.thedailyshow.com/ | ||||
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Click HERE for an essay written by Mr. Watters for the New York Times Magazine, titled "The Americanization of Mental Illness", which is also an excerpt from the book.
Joining him onstage was Kwong-Liem Karl Kwan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, SF State University, Dept. of Counseling, and formerly a tenured faculty in the Department of Educational Studies at Purdue University (1996-2005) and University of Missouri at Columbia (2005-2008). His research focuses on the development and assessment of counseling constructs specific to Asians and Asian Americans. Dr. Kwan is past program co-chair and conference co-chair of Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA) annual conferences. Serving as the event Discussant was Alvin N. Alvarez, Ph.D., Professor, SF State University, Dept. of Counseling; Member of the RAMS Board of Directors; Past President, Asian American Psychological Association; and Co-Editor of Asian American Psychology: Current Perspectives, the first textbook written to welcome those who are new to Asian American psychology, and includes contributors from the leading experts and emerging scholars and practitioners in the field.
UPDATE:
Here's a video of Ethan Watters as a guest on The Agenda with Steve Paikin. He is joined by Dr. Salman Akhtar, who was a featured speaker at an event presented by RAMS this past November 2009.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Slideshow from Soleil Portraits
