Past Events

The Northeast and Caribbean MHTTC wants to support you and your work during this unprecedented public health crisis. And we know you want to support each other! Many of you have created unique strategies for meeting the needs of your service participants, but you may still also be grappling with questions or looking for better ways of doing things. To help facilitate support and the sharing of resources and ideas, we will be facilitating Mutual Support Calls for Thriving at Work During COVID-19. These calls will be facilitated by knowledgeable leaders in the field, but we also want to benefit from your experience and expertise. Participants will have the opportunity to submit questions or comments in advance, but we welcome all to join and share with each other or just listen and benefit from the community. What & Who: One-hour virtual learning discussions for Mental Health Service Providers who want to share experiences, exchange resources, and ask and answer questions of and for each other. When: You are welcome to join 1, 2, or all 3. Mental Health Providers: Thursdays at 12 noon ET, 4/2, 4/9, and 4/16 Registration Link: https://shprutgers.zoom.us/j/731693008 Before joining each call, we invite you to submit a question or comment that you would like to see discussed during the call. We look forward to connecting with you!

Millard Public Schools (MPS) is participating in a four part professional development series designed for Behavior Coaches and Coaches of Coaches throughout their district. The series will include content on the roles and competencies of behavior coaches, data-based decision making, tiered problem-solving, and team collaboration. The goals of the series include helping all coaches to (1) Develop behavior coaching competencies; (2) Be able to identify, interpret, and use data across MTSS-B tiers of support; (3) Unify around a common behavioral problem-solving model; and (4) Develop the needed interpersonal and collaborative skills to guide the problem solving process. 

These are overwhelming times. Stress, anxiety, fear, loss, and grief – all part of ordinary life – are exponentially heightened in this time of pandemic. How do we name what we’re experiencing? How do we stay healthy in body, mind, and spirit? How do we keep gentleness and compassion alive for self and others? Please join us in exploring these questions together.

With the current public health crisis, we are facing a new way of engaging and teaching our students. While some of us may have been doing some assignments remotely in the past this new platform and the current social distancing orders have created a whole new set of stressors on our educators, their students, and families. This webinar will provide some helpful hints to help us all survive and thrive during this time while simultaneously taking care for ourselves, our students, and their families.

Times: 5pm ET / 2pm PT / 11am HT (view your time zone)   More than one hundred participants have joined each of our first two Wellness Wednesdays. In response to high demand for more, we’ve added sessions through the month of April. Educators and school mental health leadership are resilient, creative, and tenacious, but they need support to be able to provide support. In this period of stress and uncertainty, now is the time to gather and resource one another. In collaboration with the Meaning Makers Collective, we’re pleased to offer three School Mental Health Wellness Wednesdays. Each Wellness Wednesday is a 60-minute virtual session for the school mental health workforce to connect, reflect, and support each other. Please note that the Wellness Wednesdays are not a sequence; you can join us for one, some, or all. Access the presentation slides and handouts from each Wellness Wednesday session.   Audience: For state and local education agency education and behavioral health leaders, community-based organization staff, teachers, school site leaders, district administration, principals, school-based mental health staff, student support service providers, and anyone else who would like to join.   Upcoming Dates April 15 at 5 pm ET / 2 pm PT / 11 am HT (view your time zone) | Register Here April 22 at 5 pm ET / 2 pm PT / 11 am HT (view your time zone) | Register Here April 29 at 5 pm ET / 2 pm PT/ 11 am HT (view your time zone) | Register Here   Meet the Instructors Judee Fernandez is an educator, facilitator, and coach. Judee began her work in schools as a high school Spanish teacher and later co-founded First Generation Institute, a firm focused on professional development for teachers in the area of cultural relevance and equity for students of color in public schools. Judee has worked as a Wellness Director and Assistant Principal at New Village Girls Academy and a high school Principal with San Francisco USD. Judee holds a BA in Spanish and Education from Loyola Marymount University, an MA in Latin American Studies from Cal State Los Angeles, and a School Leadership Certificate from the University of Southern California. Michelle Kurta is an educator, coach, and facilitator. For over 15 years, Michelle has engaged in educational equity and justice work as a student, organizer, and teacher. Michelle earned a masters degree in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and an M.Ed in Urban Education and Single-subject Teaching Credential from UCLA. Michelle taught English Language Development, Language Arts, and Psychology at the School for Visual Arts and Humanities in the LAUSD. Prior to forming Meaning Makers Collective, Michelle most served as a resilience and trauma-informed practices coach for a national initiative to support school employee wellness in CA and CO.

This is a psychopharmacology consultation line with Dr. Matcheri Keshavan and Dr. James Feldman. If you are interested in taking part, please email your specific psychosis-related psychopharmacology questions before the call to [email protected]. If you do not have any questions, you are still welcome to join the call to listen!

World Class Resources to Discover Genetic Risks for Suicide Death Part Two of Six in the Webinar Series: Suicide Prevention Across the Educational Continuum Suicide leads to over 47,000 preventable deaths annually in the U.S. alone. In addition, suicide has increased by 33% in the U.S. in the last two decades. While environment plays a critical role, suicide has a strong genetic component. With the unique resources available to the Utah Suicide Research Program, we have the opportunity to make significant contributions to the understanding of this genetic aspect of suicide risk, with the ultimate goal of development of personalized interventions. This presentation will give an update on research progress and how results may impact the future of prevention and treatment. Presenter     Hilary Coon, PhD Suicide Prevention Across the Educational Continuum: Webinar Series     Part Three: School-Based Suicide Prevention Interventions for K-12 Population April 22, 2020 at 11:00 am MT Part Four: Crisis Response Planning for Suicidal Patients: an Introduction April 29, 2020 at 11:00 am MT Part Five: Suicide Interventions and Response for Youth Experiencing Series Emotional Disturbance (SED) May 5, 2020 at 11:00 am MT Part Six: Suicide Prevention and Interventions for Transition Age Youth on College Campuses May 13, 2020 at 11:00 am MT  

Description: This four-part webinar series will share information and discuss applications that practitioners and others can use to help engage and activate individuals with serious mental illness and/or substance use disorders in person-centered treatment and services. Part 3 will provide an overview of common approaches to person-led relapse and crisis planning approaches including safety plans, relapse prevention/management plans, and Psychiatric Advance Directives (PAD).   Presenter: Laurie Curtis, MA, CPRP, is a senior program manager at Advocates for Human Potential (AHP) providing consultation to behavioral health authorities on evidence-based practices and recovery-oriented services. Recent work for the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) includes her roles as project director for Recovery to Practice (RTP), deputy project director and AHP lead for Bringing Recovery Supports to Scale Technical Assistance Center Strategy (BRSS TACS), and director for SAMHSA’s shared decision-making project.   Learning Objectives: Provide service providers with information about two tools which can help establish positive relationships and productive communication with individuals often considered “difficult to engage.” Provide examples of how these tools can be applied in a range of settings and with diverse groups of people. Offer opportunities to discuss practical challenges and opportunities for implementing these tools in day-to-day practice.   Who Should Attend? Clinicians and practitioners working in mental health and substance use services, managers and supervisors, people using services and their families.

The Northwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center, in partnership with the Treatment and Services Adaptation Center for Resiliency, Hope, and Wellness in Schools at the University of Southern California, present the: 2019-2020 Webinar Series: Creating Trauma-Responsive Schools The first 100 registrants can attend the live webinar. Webinars will be recorded and posted on the Northwest MHTTC website within a few days and links will be sent out through our mailing list. Each webinar requires separate registration. Register only if you plan to attend the live webinar and consider joining in a central location if multiple people from your school, district or organization plan to attend.   Webinar #5: Supports for Teachers Affected by Trauma (STAT) Times: 11-12:30 p.m. PT / 10-11:30 a.m. AK / 12-1:30pm MT This webinar will address the impact of traumatic stress on educators. The webinar is designed to teach educators and other school staff about signs and symptoms of burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress (STS). It will review risk factors for STS and provide educators with strategies to prevent or mitigate STS. Finally, the webinar will address system wide approaches to address STS including ways that teachers can help other teachers reach out when they recognize that a colleague may be exhibiting signs of STS. Learn more about the six-part series and access the recorded webinar and presentation materials here.   Presenter Bios Steve Hydon, MSW, EdD is a clinical professor in field education and serves as chair of the Pupil Personnel Services Credential program. His interests are in child welfare, secondary traumatic stress and social work practice in schools. Hydon developed a secondary traumatic stress survey for teachers and mental health practitioners in schools and is a consultant to the U.S. Department of Education as an educator resilience facilitator. He has trained nationwide on secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, educator resilience and the Psychological First Aid - Listen, Protect, Connect, Model, and Teach curriculum for school personnel. He is a member of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and the Trauma and Services Adaptation Center for Resiliency, Hope and Wellness in Schools. He also serves as the liaison to the NCTSN’s Terrorism and Disaster Center and sits on the board of the American Council on School Social Work. Previously, he served as a board member of the School Social Work Association of America and was vice president of the California Association of School Social Workers for more than seven years.   Want more information and school mental health resources? Visit the Northwest MHTTC's School Mental Health page and sign up for our monthly newsletter for regular updates about events, trainings, and resources available to the Northwest region.

This presentation will describe the real-world experience of one community in a rural state (Iowa) in enhancing their crisis services.  It is meant to complement the two prior webinars in this series, the first of which described a large and relatively resource-rich crisis system that has been up and running for some time, and the second describing what an “ideal crisis system” might look like.  This webinar will be more of a case study of one community’s process of expanding their crisis services, highlighting some of the successes and how those were navigated, as well as some ongoing challenges.   About the Presenter Michael Flaum, MD Michael Flaum, MD, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, is the author or co-author of more than 100 publications, mostly reflecting his collaborative clinical research in schizophrenia in the 1990s. In 1999, he assumed the directorship of the Iowa Consortium for Mental Health, which aimed to harness the academic resources of Iowa’s universities to benefit the state’s public mental health system. His work since then has focused on efforts to optimize the quality, effectiveness and access to psychiatric services within publicly-funded settings in a recovery-oriented manner. He currently serves as president of the American Association for Community Psychiatry.

Build your Motivational Interviewing (MI) skills through the free Motivational Interviewing Learning Collaborative! Third Wednesday each month, beginning February 19, 2020.  10:00-10:45am CST The Great Lakes MHTTC and PTTC will host a series of interactive calls via Zoom for people who want to enhance their MI skills. This learning opportunity provides practitioners with a no-cost, easy to access opportunity to continue to build their practice skills towards fidelity. All sessions will be geared towards multiple levels of learning. Attend all sessions or select from the menu (see list of dates and topics below). Calls last for 45 minutes You only need to register one time for the Zoom link to the calls  ​​​ Trainer: Laura Saunders State Project Manager, Wisconsin Great Lakes ATTC, MHTTC, and PTTC Laura A. Saunders, MSSW, is the Wisconsin State Project Manager for the Great Lakes Addiction, Mental Health and Prevention Technology Transfer Centers. Her position is housed at the UW–Madison, where she’s worked since 1988. Since 2001, Laura has provided SBIRT and Motivational Interviewing training to physicians, nurses, medical students, psychologists, specialty addiction treatment providers, social workers, physical therapists, health educators, and staff who work in correctional settings. She has provided feedback and coaching to hundreds of social workers, correctional staff, and other human service providers who are interested in using evidence-based practices with fidelity. Laura joined the international group of Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) in 2006 (Sophia, Bulgaria) and is an active member of the Wisconsin MINT group. Topics by Date February 19 Your MI Spirit Is Showing March 18  Let Your Partner (Client, Consumer, Customer, Patient) Know You're Working Hard to Understand April 15 WHY Not Ask WHY And Other Things to Think About With Open Questions May 20 Taming Your Inner Cheerleader: Be Proud Of You and How Well You Can Use Affirmations June 17 Gold Star Things to Say (Genuinely!)  July 15 What To Do When the Client Says Something About Changing Their Behavior August 19 What to Do When The Client Seems Stuck About Changing Their Behavior September 16  Pay Attention to Discord October 21 Guess What Happens When You Ask for Change Talk? November 18:   TBD December 16:   TBD   

Time: 1 - 2pm ET / 10 - 11am PT / 7 - 8am HT (view your time zone) Third Wednesday of Each Month   As we learn to navigate these new realities of living and working in the context of a pandemic, it’s important we continue to deepen our shared learnings and cross-community connections. We are shifting the format of this month’s California TAY PLC to serve as a time for listening to and learning of the needs of the mental health workforce. We will use this time for facilitated discussion to better understand how COVID-19 is impacting your work and how the Pacific Southwest MHTTC can better support you during this time. This is a time for an open and interactive call for peer learning, networking, and support for anyone working to develop improved systems for youth and young adults of transition age.   What is the California TAY Professional Learning Community? This learning community is intended to support professionals working with young adults of transition age in California. Learning communities promote collective learning and the opportunity to apply that learning in a safe, collaborative environment. As we continue to work together, we hope to transition to a peer-led model that encourages active participation and maximizes the exchange of ideas and strategies for better serving youth and young adults. These PLC sessions take place during the third Wednesday of each month from 10 - 11am PT.

Times: 6 - 7:30pm ET / 3 - 4:30pm PT / 12 - 1:30pm HT   This is the first in a three-part webinar series. (Part Two, Part Three) Commemorative activities and memorialization in schools present opportunities for students and staff to take an active role in constructing an enduring memory related to a crisis event and to honor those whose lives were lost. As such, they can be important to help promote adjustment and recovery. But people, whether students, their families, or staff, often have very different -- and strong -- views about what should be done. If not done thoughtfully, the process can be contentious. This session will review key considerations for planning commemorative and memorial activities in school settings. Presenter David Schonfeld, MD, FAAP, will draw from over 30 years of experience in helping schools and communities through this process.   By participating in the session, participants will be able to: Anticipate and address spontaneous memorials in a school setting Guide the process of incorporating student input into the process so that the activities are developmentally appropriate and of relevance to the students Discuss the pros and cons of various forms of commemoration Anticipate resistance that may be seen among students and staff related to commemoration and memorialization Describe relevant policies schools should consider implementing related to commemoration and memorialization   Intended audience: educators; school mental health providers and support professionals (school counselors, nurses, psychologists, and social workers); school administrators; and community-based medical and mental health professionals providing support to schools and/or children and families   About the Presenter: David J. Schonfeld, MD, FAAP, established and directs the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement (www.schoolcrisiscenter.org); the Center coordinates the Coalition to Support Grieving Students (www.grievingstudents.org), comprised of over 85 organizations including the major educational professional organizations. He holds a joint appointment at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Schonfeld has authored more than 100 scholarly articles, book chapters, and books (e.g., The Grieving Student: A Teacher’s Guide, Brookes Publishing), and he has given more than 800 presentations on the topics of pediatric bereavement and crisis. He has provided consultation and training on school crisis and pediatric bereavement in the aftermath of a number of school crisis events and disasters within the United States and abroad, including school and community shootings in Newtown, CT, Marysville, WA, Aurora, CO, Chardon, OH, and Townville, SC; flooding from hurricanes Sandy in New York and New Jersey, Katrina in New Orleans, and Ike in Galveston, TX; 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China; tornadoes in Joplin, MO, and Alabama; and Great Smoky Mountain wildfires in Sevierville, TN. He has also conducted school-based research (funded by NICHD, NIMH, NIDA, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, William T. Grant Foundation, and other foundations) involving children’s understanding of and adjustment to serious illness and death, as well as school-based interventions to promote adjustment and risk prevention. About the National Center for School Crisis & Bereavement: In 2005, Schonfeld established the NCSCB with funding from the September 11th Children’s Fund and the National Philanthropic Trust. Further funding from the New York Life Foundation has allowed the center to provide ongoing and expanded services. The center aims to promote an appreciation of the role that schools play to support students, staff, and families at times of crisis and loss; to collaborate with organizations and agencies to further this goal; and to serve as a resource for information, training materials, consultation, and technical assistance. 1-877-53-NCSCB (1-877-536-2722) [email protected]

Trauma Sensitive Schools (TSS) coaches will gather to discuss topics to enhance their efforts to implement the TSS framework in their schools/districts. TSS is a training package and roadmap for adopting a trauma-sensitive approach school- or districtwide and is a product of the National Center for Safe and Supportive Learning Environments and the American Institutes of Research.

 “Strategies of Support for Mental Health Providers” - Empowering one another during times of crisis This is the second session of a weekly open forum to listen and share suggestions and resources.  Special attention will be paid to resiliency, strength, overcoming challenges of social distancing, and supporting mental health professionals in their efforts to adapt their delivery of services. Discussion will be facilitated by Sean A. Bear, BA, Meskwaki; Matt Ignacio, PhC, MSSW, Tohono O’odham; and Anne Helene Skinstad, PhD. Times for next session: 10:30-11:30am AK, 11:30am-12:30pm PT, 12:30-1:30pm MT, 1:30-2:30pm CT, 2:30-3:30pm ET.

The Northeast and Caribbean MHTTC wants to support you and your work during this unprecedented public health crisis. And we know you want to support each other! Many of you have created unique strategies for meeting the needs of your service participants, but you may still also be grappling with questions or looking for better ways of doing things. To help facilitate support and the sharing of resources and ideas, we will be facilitating Mutual Support Calls for Thriving at Work During COVID-19. These calls will be facilitated by knowledgeable leaders in the field, but we also want to benefit from your experience and expertise. Participants will have the opportunity to submit questions or comments in advance, but we welcome all to join and share with each other or just listen and benefit from the community. What & Who: One-hour virtual learning discussions for mental health service providers who want to share experiences, exchange resources, and ask and answer questions of and for each other. When: You are welcome to join 1, 2, or all 3. Mental Health Administrators: Tuesdays at 12 noon ET, 3/31, 4/7, and 4/14 Zoom Meeting Link: https://zoom.us/j/662032737?pwd=Zk1yQUNyczFsVlplQ1prQm1IOExNZz09 Before joining each call, we invite you to submit a question or comment that you would like to see discussed during the call. We look forward to connecting with you!

Telehealth Learning and Consultation (TLC) Tuesdays is a weekly online series for providers who are unfamiliar with telehealth. Our Technology Transfer Center (TTC) Network specialists will devote the first 20 minutes of each hour-long session to a specific topic, then address questions submitted by TTC Tuesday registrants. Recordings of the 20-minute presentations as well as additional resources will be posted on this page as they become available. You must register separately for each TLC Tuesdays session. While filling out the registration form, you will prompted to submit any questions you might have. Register by clicking one of the dates below. Certificates of completion are available.

Educar a los proveedores de servicios y organizaciones sobre la necesidad de atención para evitar la fatiga de la compasión. Objetivos: •Discutir la definición de Fatiga por Compasión (FC) y términos relacionados •Concienciación sobre los riesgos de desarrollar FC •Exponer la señales y/o síntomas de la fatiga por compasión •Discutir estrategias para protegernos y/o lidiar con la fatiga por compasión a nivel personal y organizacional.

*Special Note: Summit has shifted to a virtual format. Please keep tabs on the official website for additional details and updates. **From the official website: All previously registered attendees need to modify their registration by 4/10/20 at noon PST or they will not receive the links to the Zoom webinars they wish to attend!   Full Summit Dates: Tuesday, April 14, 2020 - Friday, April 17, 2020 The Pacific Southwest MHTTC will be presenting three workshops at the 17th Hawaii International Summit on Preventing, Assessing & Treating Trauma Across the Lifespan. Workshops will take place on April 14th, 16th, and 17th, 2020. Please see below for more details on our workshops. Delivering Services Through a Culturally Responsive Trauma-Informed Lens/Approach Tuesday, April 14, 2020: 12:30pm - 4:30pm HT Trauma refers to individual trauma resulting from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being. A trauma-informed approach to the delivery of mental health services includes an understanding of trauma and an awareness of the impact it can have across settings, services, and populations. This workshop provides a conceptual foundation of the importance of trauma and approaching the delivery of services and supports through culturally responsive trauma-informed approach. Participants will engage in interactive experiences/discussions and examine the importance of culturally responsive trauma-informed approach as a change process and better understand the leadership required to motivate and manage the change to integrate trauma-informed approach and cultural and linguistic competence in the delivery of mental health services and supports. Implicit Bias in the Manifestation of Trauma Thursday, April 16, 2020: 12:00pm - 1:45pm HT Implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. Everyone has them, and becoming mindful of how implicit and explicit biases impact our work with others is important. This workshop explores the dynamics of implicit bias and its impact on service and supports provision in mental health spaces. Implicit biases affect how service providers perceive and respond to people. Bias can lead to unfair differences in the expectations we hold of those we serve, ways in which we interact with them, and the retraumatization that we create in our encounters with our clients. This workshop will also dive into the concept and understanding of implicit bias leading to workplace trauma among staff and personnel in that of the unhealthy workplace culture and climate. Participants will experience a hands-on and interactive workshop that when they finish they will have a strong grasp of implicit bias in trauma in the workplace setting. Culturally Responsive Strategies: Coping, Resilience Strategies for Crisis/Trauma Service Providers Friday, April 17, 2020: 8:00am - 11:15am HT Secondary trauma or vicarious trauma is the emotional residue of exposure that health care providers have from working with people, hearing their trauma stories, and becoming witnesses to the pain, fear, and terror that trauma survivors have endured. This experience is filtered their own cultural values and beliefs. This workshop provides an understanding of vicarious/secondary trauma and its impact on crisis/trauma response providers and other providers through a cultural lens. Assessing for symptoms like compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma which diverse cultures experience and express in different ways will be reviewed. Systemic and organizational approaches to providing coping and resilience building strategies using a cultural lens will be explored. Participants will engage in interactive experiences/discussions and examine the importance of culturally responsive trauma informed approaches to coping positively and moving towards posttraumatic growth.

Telehealth Tools: Telehealth Learning and Consultation (TLC) Tuesdays This hour-long online series will support behavioral health providers who are new to using telehealth. During each hour-long session, our Technology Transfer Center (TTC) Network specialists will spend the first 20 minutes addressing a specific topic, then answer questions submitted by TLC Tuesday registrants. Recordings of the 20-minute presentations as well as additional resources will be posted on the web as they become available. Every session will run from 9:00 am – 10:00 am (MT). Registration is required for every TLC Tuesday session. During registration, you will be prompted to submit any questions you have in advance of the session. Future Sessions      April 21: Telehealth with Children and Adolescents April 28: Telehealth Troubleshooting  

Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is a multidisciplinary, team-based model that provides intensive community-based and outreach-oriented services to people who experience the most severe and persistent mental illness. The vast majority also have a co-occurring substance use disorder and many experience comorbid medical illnesses as well as homelessness. This is a vulnerable population and their providers – ACT teams – are at elevated risk themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic. Weekly Virtual Meetings The Northwest MHTTC is partnering with the Institute for Best Practices at the University of North Carolina to host and facilitate regular meetings for ACT teams and ACT stakeholders. These meetings will be held weekly on Mondays at 12:00-1:30 pm Pacific/3:00-4:30 pm Eastern. Goals of the meetings are to: connect with one other share strategies and resources for adapting team practices and communications    facilitate connection to the most up-to-date resources during the COVID-19 outbreak.   Virtual Discussion Forum In addition to the weekly meet-up, we have also created a Virtual Discussion Forum to help organize information, resources, and strategies used across teams. You can participate in the forum as a guest, or sign up as a member. Within the Discussion Forum are specific board topics: Support for ACT Service Recipients; Support for ACT Team Staff; Info and Updates: Federal Sources; Info and Updates: State and Local Sources; ACT Fidelity and COVID-19 Pandemic; and Words of Encouragement. Click on a board of interest to read existing threads, react to threads, or post new threads.   For more information or questions, contact: Maria Monroe-Devita, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine; Co-Director of the Northwest MHTTC; and Director, Washington State Center of Excellence in First Episode Psychosis. Lorna Moser, PhD, Director of the UNC ACT Technical Assistance Center in the UNC Department of Psychiatry’s Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health; and Coordinator of the North Carolina ACT Coalition.

In Session II, presenters will discuss what coming back to the “new normal” looks like for college students’ as they return to their respective campuses. It is anticipate that many students’ will have experienced some trauma, if not just the shock of being dispersed from campus to the actual trauma of personal or familial illness. This model is very akin to campus responsiveness post suicide or traumatic event (e.g. shootings) and presenters will discuss how campuses can effectively support the return of students, providing both a place for recovery and education. Join Alison Malmon, founder and Executive Director of Active Minds and Dennis Mohatt, VP, Behavioral Health Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and Co-Director of the Mountain Plains Mental Health Technology Transfer Center, as they lead participants thru this sensitive and timely conversation. Presenters Alison Malmon Dennis Mohatt Please contact Genevieve Berry at [email protected] with any questions or concerns.  

Description: As peer support specialists seek to quickly and effectively offer digital peer support across the United States, it is important that they — and their organizations — know the practical aspects of using digital peer support to deliver support services. Part 2 of this two-part series will cover topics including practical information on how to quickly and effectively build digital peer support capacity in your organization, including developing technology infrastructure, peer support specialists and service user training, and sustainability considerations.   Presenter: Karen L. Fortuna, PhD, MSW, holds a doctorate in Social Welfare and a master’s degree in Social Work. Dr. Fortuna is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry in the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. Dr. Fortuna is co-producing digital peer support programs with peer support specialists as equal partners in development, research, and ownership. Her team has developed a commercially viable smartphone app, PeerTECH, in which they are currently testing its impact in a real-world environment. Dr. Fortuna was awarded an NIMH K01 award (K01MH117496), a NARSAD Young Investigator Grants from the Brain and Behavior Foundation and the Alvin R. Tarlov & John E. Ware Jr. Award in Patient Reported Outcomes for her work, and the Association of Gerontological Education Social Work Faculty Achievement Award. Dr. Fortuna’s work can be seen in numerous book chapters on digital peer support, in Nature, Psychiatric Services, and Forbes Magazine. She currently serves as editor of the JMIR: Journal of Participatory Medicine. She is a board member of the International Association of Peer Supporters. She currently serves on the International Editorial Board for the British Journal of Social Work. She was invited to serve as a member of the American Psychiatric Association’s Smartphone App Expert Advisory Panel.     Learning Objectives: Discuss optimal ways peer support specialists and service users learn Understand how to quickly and effectively build digital peer support infrastructure Understand the effectiveness of co-designing digital peer support organizations for sustainable practice   Who Should Attend? Peer support specialists, researchers, administrators, behavioral health care professionals, state and local policymakers, and community advocates.

This webinar was recorded and is available for viewing on the Great Lakes MHTTC Products and Resources page.  Presenter Jonathan Neufeld, director of the Great Plains Telehealth Resource and Assistance Center, provides an overview of telehealth issues for behavioral health providers as they rapidly transition to virtual delivery of services and supports. Topics covered will include definitions, modalities, and basics of delivering psychotherapy and other specialty mental health services.  Journey Mental Health Center, based in Madison, WI, has rapidly expanded telehealth services to meet the needs of consumers across a wide array of settings and levels of care.  This presentation will highlight the considerations that were incorporated to promote safe, secure telehealth experiences.  Journey team members Thomas McCarthy and Lisa Lizak present a case study about the agency's shift to virtual services.  Speakers:   Jonathan Neufeld, PhD, HSSP, Director of the Great Plains Telehealth Resource and Assistance Center (gpTRAC), a federally funded technical assistance center program housed at the University of Minnesota. gpTRAC provides telehealth training to healthcare providers and programs interested in implementing, evaluating and enhancing telehealth programs. The program serves organizations in the six-state region including Minnesota, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota and Nebraska.     Thomas McCarthy has worked at Journey Mental Health Center for over 3 years, with experience as a community-based clinician, outpatient therapist, and Clinical EHR System Analyst.  In his current role, he provides training and support to clinical staff using the electronic health record.  Thomas recently assisted the agency in developing workflows to rapidly expand use of telehealth technology.     Lisa Lizak has worked in the field of social services for 30 years and has provided clinical, case management and administrative services. For the past 13 years, she has worked as a policy writer and Organization Resources Manager at Journey Mental Health Center in Madison, WI. Lisa created the telehealth program six years ago at Journey.