Dr. Eileen Reilly Guest Speaker at BHWF

Beacon Hill Woman’s Forum (BHWF) hosted Psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Reilly as guest speaker. Dr. Reilly has been passionate about caring for Boston’s homeless population since she was 21-years-old and her parish was seeking homeless shelter volunteers. The shy college student was assigned to help those in need at the Pine Street Inn, where she observed 300 homeless men, many of whom intoxicated or mentally ill, with one person sleeping in a fireplace.

“That opened my eyes to people’s experience being homeless,” said Dr. Reilly, who noticed the difficulty of recruiting nurses to manage the night clinic. “I was a volunteer; and then became a full-time worker there. In 1982, they opened a women’s unit. Up until then, there was no place except Rosie’s Place for women to go. Because it was crowded, they had a two-week limit. People would have to leave for a month, and then come back. But Pine Street was open to everybody. That was exciting.”

Now Dr. Reilly works for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, concentrating on homeless individuals suffering from mental illnesses. She is also a psychiatrist for the daytime Street Team outreach group of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP), which has been providing healthcare for people living on the street since 1985.

“Health Care for the Homeless helps approximately 11,000 patients a year at over 30 locations. Every major shelter in Boston has Health Care for the Homeless physicians and nurse practitioners working at them,” explained Dr. Reilly. “For a long time, psychiatrists would wait in their office for homeless people to come. Homeless people never came. It was clear that we need to go to the people.”