Behavioral Health Hub

Welcome to the Behavioral Health Hub Resource PageSubscribe to Behavioral Health Hub

The Behavioral Health Hub is a listserv that serves as a venue for the behavioral health community to share new resources, tips, and opportunities related to the delivery of behavioral health services. Emails are typically sent 1-2 times per week, and listserv members are invited and encouraged to actively share they things they are working on and any challenges they are facing. With 1,000+ members from all regions of Virginia and a wide variety of organizations, the Hub is the best way to keep connected and updated on the latest news and trends in behavioral health. Subscribe by clicking the blue button above!

This Resource Page houses some of our favorite resources shared via the listserv so that you can refer to them or share them at any time without having to dig through your inbox. We hope you find them to be useful!

Contact Andrea Lancaster with any questions or suggestions for the Behavioral Health Hub.

Workplace and Wellness Resources

  • Check out VHCF’s Resilience Building Blocks for Life cards, which provide a simple framework to help adults identify resilience skills they already possess and those they would like to strengthen. Tip Sheets are available to guide you through using the cards with your clients, and with peers.
  • The Surgeon General’s Report on Workplace Mental Health and Well-being offers a helpful framework for employers and organizations looking to support their employees. It also provides a structure for employees looking for ways to advocate for wellness in their workplace, and for clinicians supporting clients who may be navigating burnout and workplace wellness issues.
  • Mental Health America offers a Workplace Mental Health Toolkit to help organizations develop the foundations of a mentally healthy workplace. It includes fact sheets, printable resources, checklists, articles, and guides to help develop and improve culture and benefits that support mental health. You can download the full toolkit or individual documents on the MHA website.
  • The National Alliance on Mental Illness also created a toolkit – the Ultimate Workplace Mental Health Toolkit. It offers almost 50 pages of thoughtful content on how to assess your organization’s approach to mental health, key concept related to workplace mental health, and how your organization can impactfully approach workplace mental health.

 Behavioral Health Service Delivery Resources

  • The National Council on Mental Wellbeing published The Comprehensive Healthcare Integration (CHI) Framework, a guide for physicians, payers, and policymakers to measure progress in the delivery of integrated medical and behavioral health care services. This resource provides clear steps along several different domains towards full behavioral health integration.
  • The Well Being Trust, in partnership with the Eugene S. Farley, JR Health Policy Center and the Practice Innovation Program at the University of Colorado developed The Building Blocks of Behavioral Health Integration: A Framework for Care Delivery Expectations. Rather than prescribing a specific model for integrated behavioral health and primary care, it offers flexible options for implementing (or strengthening) an integrated approach in a primary care setting. The framework itself is a concise, quick read, and the full report provides additional details and background on how the framework can be implemented to align expectations of integrated care across payers, providers, and patients.
  • For a simplified overview of the different levels of integrated behavioral health and primary care, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency and the National Council on Mental Wellbeing offer the Standard Framework for Levels of Integrated Healthcare. At only 3 pages, it gives a quick at-a-glance summary of what integrated care looks like and how it operates at different levels.
  • The Virginia HEALS Trauma-Informed Agency Self-Assessment guides you through taking a deeper look at your organization’s trauma-informed care practices. The tool offers community-serving agencies and organizations a simple, accessible structure for assessing those practices and setting clear and achievable improvement goals. Interested in trauma-informed care? More resources are available here.

 Behavioral Health Data

  • In 2022, VHCF released an Assessment of the Capacity of Virginia’s Licensed Behavioral Health Workforce. This tool will help to serve as a baseline to measure progress and to help guide investments intended to increase access to basic mental health services in Virginia.
  • Virginia Medicaid offers a behavioral health dashboard that tracks how Medicaid members use services for mental illness and developmental disabilities. The Behavioral Health Utilization and Expenditures dashboard offers a high-level demographic profile of Medicaid members receiving behavioral health services, a breakdown by locality and costs, and yearly trends in behavioral health expenditures. It gives members, providers, taxpayers, and other stakeholders a better idea of who accesses behavioral health treatment, what services are in greatest demand, and whether there are differences among regions of the state. The dashboard is a joint initiative between the DMAS Behavioral Health Division and the agency’s Office of Data Analytics.
  • The George Washington University Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity developed a national database on the Mental Health/Substance Use Disorder workforce. Using novel data sources, this comprehensive national database identifies nearly 1.2 million behavioral health providers, including physicians, psychologists, counselors, therapists, and advanced practice providers. Presented in an interactive map, it enables you to break down the MH workforce data by locality.
  • Each year, Mental Health America assesses mental health condition prevalence and access to care to inform state rankings for both youth and adult mental health. Virginia is ranked 38th overall, but is only 34th for access to care. The rankings are broken out in an interactive map, as well as by indicator used to evaluate states’ progress.
  • America’s School Mental Health Report Card, released by the Hopeful Futures Campaign, breaks down states’ progress on meeting the mental health needs of their students. Virginia is ranked 21st Scroll to page 207 in the report to see that ranking broken down into different indicators, as well as policy recommendations for improvement.
  • The State of Mental Health of Virginia’s Youth – slides from a recent VHCF Mental Health Roundtable

Podcasts Recommendations

  • Laurie Santos’ podcast, The Happiness Lab, is one of our favorites. Based on the psychology course she teaches at Yale University – the most popular course in the university’s 300-year history – Dr. Santos takes you through the latest scientific research and shares some surprising and inspiring stories that will change the way you think about happiness.
  • Hidden Brain, hosted by Shankar Vedantam, an NPR science correspondent, focuses on the little things that often go overlooked in our daily lives. Episodes unravel patterns that influence our behaviors, the instincts that guide our choices, and elements that affect the unfolding of our relationships.
  • For a daily dose of mindfulness, try the Daily Meditation Podcast on Soundcloud and Apple Podcasts.
  • The Positive Psychology Podcast covers all sorts of topics such as passion, mindfulness, and strengths with a focus on positive psychology so you can cherry-pick the strategies that work the best for you.

Book Recommendations

 

Last Updated on October 25, 2023