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 the 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

  • In response to increased demand for resilience-building resources, VHCF developed a Peer-to-Peer Tip Sheet to guide you through 7 activities using the Resilience Skill Building Cards. These activities are designed to be used by two partners – coworkers, family members, friends – to spark a strengths-based, resilience-focused conversation.
  • 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.
  • Engaging in a little self-compassion as you care for your clients and community is more important now than ever. The Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, founded by Dr. Christopher Germer and Dr. Kristin Neff, has a wide variety of trainings, resources, and articles on Mindful Self-Compassion.

Stress Relievers and Self-Care

  • The Free Mindfulness Project hosts a wide variety of guided meditation exercises online. They are all free to download and distribute non-commercially.
  • The Headspace App began offering a selection of content for free during the COVID-19 Pandemic and the guided meditations shared on that resource page as still just as relevant and valuable.
  • Loving-Kindness Meditation focuses on developing feelings of goodwill, kindness, and warmth towards others. An impressive number of studies show that it can help increase positive emotions, compassion, empathy, and social connection while reducing the stress response, PTSD symptoms, and self-criticism. Read more about some of the evidence behind it here (from a Stanford and Yale Wellness researcher). Interested in learning more? Take a few minutes and try it out for yourself here.

 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.

 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 20th overall, but is only 37th 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.

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.
  • The Trauma Therapist podcast has been sharing episodes about mental health and trauma since 2014, with over 500 available to choose from. Hosted by Guy Macpherson, Ph.D., most episodes focus on an interview with an expert in the field of psychology and trauma.

Book Recommendations

A Storm within a Storm

As behavioral health providers have continued to support their clients’ behavioral health through the global transition into a post-COVID-19 world, historical trauma and toxic stress resulting from systemic racism continue to impact clients and communities of color. Frontline behavioral health providers are in a unique position to affect change.

While it is far from an exhaustive list, this is a sampling of the wealth of resources available related to the intersection of race and mental health, and how it can inform your behavioral health practice.

  • The AAKOMA Project released the State of Mental Health for Youth of Color research in 2022. Resulting from surveys of youth of color, the data gives an overview of the mental health experience, treatment utilization, and impact of racism and COVID-19. Over 18% of surveyed youth reported exposure to racial trauma often or very often in their lifetime.
  • Mental Health and Wellness in a Racism Pandemic – President Obama joined Congressman John Lewis; Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson; Writer and Survivor of Police Brutality, Leon Ford, Jr.; and Youth Leader, LeQuan Muhammad, in a conversation moderated by Activist and Author, Darnell Moore to discuss the emotional and mental toll racism takes on people of color.
  • Black Mental Wellness  – The mission of Black Mental Wellness is to provide access to evidence-based information and resources about mental health and behavioral health topics from a Black perspective, to highlight and increase the diversity of mental health professionals, and to decrease the mental stigma in the Black community. The website shares culturally-sensitive educational resources on mental health conditions, coping and wellness, and other mental health related topics.
  • Stress & Trauma Toolkit for Treating African Americans in a Changing Political and Social Environment– Both overt and covert acts of racism influence the psyche of African Americans. This toolkit offers assessment and treatment recommendations, and additional resources for providers to deepen their understanding of treating stress and trauma in today’s changing environment.

 

Last Updated on January 30, 2023