A program at the University of Missouri is training social workers to bring behavioral healthcare into primary care clinics. The Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training program is run through the MU School of Social Work and completed its first year in July.
The program supports integrated behavioral health, which provides a more whole body approach to healthcare. Instead of categorizing health problems into mental or physical and treating them separately, healthcare providers try to understand them together and find solutions based on how they interact.
"It's a very cohesive team where the physicians can constantly talk with the psychiatrist, the psychiatrist can constantly talk with the nurses and the social workers and you're developing a unified front and a unified treatment plan,” Suzanne Cary said. She is the Director of Field Education for MU's School of Social Work.
In August 2014, the University of Missouri campuses in Columbia and St. Louis received a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration to pay for graduate social work students to work in primary care clinics across Missouri. This differs from other programs in integrated behavioral health in Missouri, as they tend to focus on bringing physical care into mental health clinics.
"The physicians can constantly talk with the psychiatrist, the psychiatrist can constantly talk with the nurses and the social workers."
Corrinne Mann was one of the first students to take part in the program. She finished her field work in July, at the South Providence Family and Community Medicine clinic in Columbia. At first she shadowed and learned from a clinical supervisor, but by the end of the program she was working with 40 patients of her own.
"So what our main focus is as Behavioral Health Consultants is to help people make behavior changes that impact their physical health and their overall well-being," Mann said.
The students help identify needs and give basic solutions that primary care doctors may not have the time or the knowledge base to provide.
They don’t act as doctors or psychiatrists, but instead as clinical social workers. And they don't prescribe medicine, but they might give the patient daily exercises in meditation or tracking anxiety.
Mann said some patients can get lost in between their primary care doctor and a psychiatrist or other type of doctor because of travel, long wait times, or if they just forget. She said that's how having behavioral health consultants in the primary care clinic can help the most.
The primary doctor would finish an appointment with a patient, and if there are behavioral health needs the doctor brings in an office consultant, like Mann. Then Mann would meet the patient and ask questions to assess the level of health and motivation to change a behavior.
"And then the patient's right there, has just talked to their doctor about improving their health,” Mann said. “Maybe they wanted to quit smoking, and that would be an excellent time for the doctor to bring me in and that person is motivated to make a change, they've just expressed that."
"Our main focus is as Behavioral Health Consultants is to help people make behavior changes that impact their physical health and their overall well-being."
This grant is also funding graduate students to work with children, which is new territory for the field of integrated behavioral health, which in the past has focused on adults.
MU's program is aimed at training more integrated behavioral health professionals, and including both students who are about to enter the workforce and professionals who are already there.
Misty Snodgrass, the director of public policy for the Missouri Coalition for Community Behavioral Healthcare, said this will help keep momentum in the profession.
"It really does a good job of helping train the workforce, because that's a huge issue as we move forward in behavioral health and currently, is making sure that we have the people of tomorrow to be able to treat those individuals that will need treatment 10 to 15 years from now," Snodgrass said.
The program at MU is designed to launch students into integrated health care positions like behavioral health consultants and directors of care for Medicaid recipients, and to help keep them there.
Initially it provides a stipend of 10,000 dollars so that students can train full-time in a clinic. After a few years have passed, Cary says the program will follow up with students to see what they are doing and assess progress in the field of integrated behavioral health.