This new report from the Montana Healthcare Foundation shows how Medicaid expansion significantly increases access to care for mental illness and substance use disorders and supports a long-needed transformation in Montana’s behavioral health system.
Promising Evidences of the Role Emotional CPR: Co-Immunity through Community CPR – As this silent, invisible virus ravages our earth, many of us—young and old—feel alone, powerless, and numb. We are urged to keep a physical distance, wear a mask and wash our hands while we wait for enough people to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Alienation, frustration, and despair seep in and crush our spirits in their frightening coils. When mental health professionals see these challenges and screen for anxiety and depression, their usual response is to affix a diagnostic label, and then prescribe medications. Yet, in times of other disasters or public health crisis, medication and traditional psychotherapy may not be enough—more than ever we need each other .
Providing harm reduction supplies, including sterile injection equipment and naloxone for overdose reversal, reduces morbidity and mortality for people who use drugs. Yet, despite the strong public health imperative, scaling these services to people in need has been slow and inadequate. Syringe service programs (SSPs) that distribute these supplies are unavailable in many areas of high need in the USA. Online access and mail-delivery may be a modern solution to problems that have limited the impact of harm reduction for decades.
National Federation of Families Legislation and Advocacy -The National Federation of Families is involved at the national level in monitoring legislation, funding opportunities, advocacy opportunities and resources that could aid your work as the voice for families in your community, state and nationwide. Learn about current topics that impact youth and families, see our latest edition of updates, sign up to receive alerts, share news from your state and explore the advocacy toolkit – designed to assist individuals and organizations in their role as the voice for families.
Partnership to End Addiction Advocacy Toolkit You are interested in advocacy, but where do you begin? What does it mean to advocate? How do you do so effectively? This toolkit provides you with an introduction to advocating on the issue of addiction. It explains what advocacy is and highlights why it’s so important and powerful. Get tips for building relationships and effectively communicating with members of Congress, learn about important advocacy needs in the addiction field, and gain guidance for getting involved. You can use these tactics to advocate at any level of government (i.e., federal, state, local).
Healing Voices is a social action documentary which chronicles the lives of people experiencing mental health issues or extreme states in real time. The film features characters who have made incredible recoveries, or are working towards recovery, by finding alternatives to the current one-size-fits-all medical model.
This guide presents three evidence-based practices that engage and improve outcomes for youth and young adults with co-occurring SED/SMI and substance misuse or SUD. These approaches will assist clinicians, behavioral health organizations, primary care providers, schools, insurers, transformation experts, and policy makers to understand, select, and implement evidence-based interventions that support youth and young adult mental health. These include psychosocial interventions, family behavioral therapy, medication, proactive outreach, and use of web-based and other technologies.
HB 2980 would provide funding for three “peer respite centers”—short-term, homelike facilities for people experiencing mental health crises. Currently, people suffering such crises often end up in jail or emergency rooms, neither of which are equipped to handle them. This bill proposes instead to create safe places where people who’ve had mental health crises themselves—i.e., peers—would provide the services.
Theoretical Framework and Impact of the Phoenix Sober Active Community Model – The Phoenix is a sober active community that provides free, active and engaging programming – such as rock climbing, CrossFit, yoga, dance classes and social events – to […]
The Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) model alleviates decades-old challenges that have led to a crisis in providing access to mental health and addiction care. CCBHCs are responsible for directly providing (or contracting with partner organizations to provide) nine types of services,1 with an emphasis on the provision of 24-hour crisis care, utilization of evidence-based practices, care coordination and integration with physical health care. The demonstration program represents the largest investment in mental health and addiction care in generations.
Learn how to bring together and facilitate support and encouragement among a group of people who share common problems and experiences.
The Legal Action Center has created a series of tools explaining how the federal alcohol and drug confidentiality rules apply to Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) services for youth.
The National Council for Behavioral Health, through the National Center of Excellence for Integrated Health Solutions grant award from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA), is the home of the newest evidence-based resources, tools and support for organizations working to integrate primary and behavioral health care.
Peers for Progress was founded in 2006 to promote peer support as a key part of health, health care, and prevention around the world. The mission of Peers for Progress is to accelerate the availability of best practices in peer support. Peers for Progress is designed to demonstrate the value of peer support, extend the evidence base for such interventions, help establish peer support as an accepted, core component of health care, and promote peer support programs and networks on a global scale.
A Brief History of Peer Support: Origins by Patrick Tang, MPH
Mission to carry a message of recovery, empowerment, hope and healing to people with lived experience with mental health issues, trauma, and/or extreme states. They provide training and education, information and referrals, networking, conference planning, research, and representation on national boards.
What Helps What Harms Maryland was designed to infuse the youth and young adult voice into strategic policy actions and planning processes for systemic change in the state of Maryland through convening discussion groups and forums to learn about and make recommendations to address young adult peer needs.
Peer support is an evidence-based practice for individuals with mental health conditions or challenges. Both quantitative and qualitative evidence indicate that peer support lowers the overall cost of mental health services by reducing re-hospitalization rates and days spent in inpatient services, increasing the use of outpatient services. Peer support improves quality of life, increases and improves engagement with services, and increases whole health and self-management. This document identifies key outcomes of per support services over a range of studies differentiated by program, geographic location, and year. Though many of the studies and programs listed in this article have some major programmatic differences, one thing is the same ? they all demonstrate the value of peer support.