TERRY GARAHAN

Garahan began his work in human services as a twenty year old working in an orphanage. After returning to school for a degree in Education, he worked for Head Start. His career with the mentally ill started in 1975, interviewing long term patients being discharged from Willard Psychiatric Hospital in upstate New York. He developed programs to reintroduce them to the community.

During the next decade Garahan established housing programs for the seriously mentally ill and worked in substance abuse treatment. He also provided crisis intervention and mentoring programs for young adults. In 1986, Garahan volunteered with Operation Smile in the Philippines.

In 1991 he met with Eastern Bloc mental health professionals in Budapest, Hungary to help develop outpatient programs in the former Soviet Union based on the U.S. model.

Upon his return to the U.S., he began his employment with Tompkins County Mental Health, which lasted for the next 19 years. He supervised the Outpatient Clinic, which serves individuals with chronic psychiatric illness.

Having traveled to over 40 countries, A trip to Kenya in 2016, inspired Terry and his spouse to work assisting Makhanga Hope Academy to purchase sewing machines and materials for girls and young women to make and sell reusable menstrual pads.

He also led the Emergency Services program for Tompkins County, where he developed an innovative program that took a proactive approach to working with emotionally disturbed persons and those with mental illness. Garahan worked on cross training for law enforcement and mental health. Through this work he became an FBI trained Hostage Negotiator, and co-founder of the Tompkins Critical Incident Negotiation Team and the Ithaca Police Department SWAT team. He is trained in threat assessment and has provided consultation to all local law enforcement agencies, the FBI, U.S. Marshal Service and the Secret Service. Garahan also has specialized training in trauma treatment that led him to provide mental health treatment to World Trade Center survivors after 9/11.

Garahan began teaching as an adjunct instructor in the Department of Sociology at Ithaca College in 1989 and became a full time faculty member in fall 2006. Now retired, his primary teaching interest was the intersection of theory and practice in Counseling and Social Work.

Garahan has a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Brockport and a Master of Social Work from Norfolk State University. He is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.