Mental Health Program
The WICHE Mental Health Program seeks to enhance the public systems of care for persons with mental illnesses, children with serious emotional disturbances, and their families. The program approaches this mission through partnerships with state mental health authorities, advocacy and consumer groups, federal agencies, and higher education institutions. Activities focus upon direct technical assistance to state and local agencies, policy analysis and research, support of state mental health agency data analysis, and liaison activities with higher education to enhance workforce development. Current projects include:
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WICHE Center for Rural Mental Health Research: This federally funded research institute conducts studies that help inform health policy at multiple levels of decision making. Focused on rural mental health, the research center is one of seven rural health research centers in the U.S. funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Office of Rural Health Policy. Since most rural Americans obtain their mental health care through primary care providers rather than specialty mental health providers, the research initially seeks to expand knowledge related to the use of evidence-based practices in primary care and the potential impact of the adoption of such practices on health outcomes for consumers.
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Western States Decision Support Group (WSDSG): Through a partnership in funding between the federal Center for Mental Health Services and 15 WICHE states, the Mental Health Program helps to oversee a regional effort to enhance and coordinate program evaluation and data-driven decision support in the public mental health systems of the WICHE West. WSDSG meets face to face three times yearly to focus on regional issues related to enhancing accountability through sound data management, in order to support quality improvement, policy formation, and administration.
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Workforce development: The WICHE Mental Health Program is engaged in an array of activities to improve the preparation and continuing education of the public mental health workforce in the WICHE West. The program facilitates monthly Rural Mental Health Grand Rounds Webcasts, funded by the federal Center for Mental Health Services. These webcasts enable rural professionals to obtain training on current issues in mental health practice (and continuing-education credits) without the need or expense of travel. The Mental Health Program is also working with Alaska, Arizona, and other WICHE states to improve collaboration in training between state mental health systems and higher education programs. In addition, it is working with South Dakota and Idaho to develop specific training opportunities for the staff of their community mental health programs, in order to enhance quality care through professional skill development.
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State-Specific technical assistance: The WICHE Mental Health Program is routinely called upon by member states and others to facilitate activities focused upon system improvement, planning, and needs assessment. The program is working with Alaska to support its initiative around building an integrated delivery system. In Wyoming and South Dakota, the program continues to support the development of systems of care for children and families. Staff members frequently work with states across the region in areas of needs assessment and gap analysis.
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The Rural Road from Promising Practice to Evidence-Based Practice Project is a collaborative effort between the Mental Health Program and the Human Services Research Institute’s Evaluation Center. The project was initiated to help identify promising behavioral health programs or practices in rural communities (such as those related to mental health and substance abuse) and to make a record of them. The goal of this ongoing project is to pinpoint promising practices and facilitate technical assistance and research that evolves them into rural-focused, evidence-based practices.
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The Mental Health Program has been collaborating with the WICHE Student Exchange Program to develop the Western Consortium for Rural Social Work Education. The consortium, which has seven state university partners – Boise State University, Colorado State University, University of Alaska Anchorage, the University of Nevada Reno, the University of North Dakota, the University of Utah, and the University of Wyoming – has proposed an integrated plan to address the shortage of social workers with M.S.W. and Ph.D. degrees and expertise in rural mental health practice. The purpose of the project is to maximize access to graduate social work education in the underserved rural regions of the West. The institutional members propose to share their online courses and academic resources, so that M.S.W. students have access to a full range of online curricula. Opportunities would include: online graduate courses on rural social work practice, shared between partner M.S.W. programs; access to a graduate certificate in rural social work practice, jointly delivered by partnership members; broadened access to the University of Utah distance-delivered Ph.D. program, with a focus on rural mental health practice; opportunities to teach and conduct research focused on rural community needs on partner campuses; and applied practicum experiences, offered by state public mental health authority.