She is an advocate for the rights of severely mentally ill adults through her board memberships with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), DuPage County, IL. and New Beginnings Community Services. Also, Dr. Semmelhack has a clinical practice focusing on the using group work with severely mentally ill institutionalized adults. She has published several papers suggesting the efficacy of the group-as-a-whole model (based on the Tavistock tradition) with this population.