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Earlier this year, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) launched the “Behavioral Health Equity Challenge: Outreach and Engagement Strategies for Underserved Racial and Ethnic Communities.” Community-based organizations (CBOs) often serve on the front lines to address the needs of their community members. The goal of this challenge was to identify and highlight outreach and engagement strategies CBOs use to increase access to behavioral health services for racially and ethnically diverse, underserved communities.

On Thursday, September 7 at 2:30 – 4:00 pm EDT, join this Showcase to hear from the winners of the Behavioral Health Equity Challenge! Winners will share their innovative strategies, lessons learned from implementation, and recommendations for replication in other communities. SAMHSA invites CBOs, state and federal leaders, and behavioral health leaders to join the Showcase to learn from and engage in Q&A with Challenge Winners.

The event was also shared on Facebook Live at fb.com/nned.net and closed captioning was available through Zoom.

• Learn more about the Behavioral Health Equity Challenge
• Learn about all 10 of the Challenge winners

Challenge Winner Presenters

Mt. Olive Baptist Church

North Carolina Youth Violence Prevention Center

Southcentral Foundation

Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center

Inside a living unit at Cook County jail, detainees talk openly about substance abuse and what it has done to their lives, examining the choices they have made and discuss the changes they can make.

Shaheed Johnson is eager to participate in the session, which is part of the Sheriff’s Men’s Addiction Recovery Treatment, or SMART, Program.

“You could put the same time and energy into getting high as you can into doing the right thing and becoming a positive member of society,” he said.

The SMART program, and a sister program called “THRIVE” for female detainees, grew out of a realization that overdose deaths countywide are skyrocketing…especially those involving fentanyl.

“The fact that we have this horrific opioid epidemic going on meant that we were going to have issues with it here, both with people inside and people passing through it,” said Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

One of the keys to the success of Cook County’s addiction treatment programs is their use of medically-assisted treatment. Cook County’s Cermak Medical Services is the only jail in the state offering such a program.

“We have had excellent results,” said Dr. Patrick Ennis, who is the director of the Opioid Treatment Program at Cermak Hospital. “The studies really show that methadone and buprenorphine prevent overdose, in the long run.”

Read more at NBCChicago.com.

Most adolescents attempt to influence peers on social media by making themselves seem as attractive as possible, often by using photo filters and other means to carefully craft posts. However, a social media subculture appears to have formed around the role of mental illness. Embracing an identity of illness has several potential benefits. It can generate the interest and support of peers, lionize the sufferer as heroic, and facilitate affiliation with a like-minded peer group, possibly a preferred group (eg, one perceived as an oppressed minority).

Identification with a psychiatric diagnosis can justify the teen’s distress or failures, and it can provide an excuse from unwanted responsibilities such as going to school or doing chores. Teens often play the role of therapist or caretaker to one another online, making the purported illness the basis for a valued relationship. Therefore, some adolescents may be very invested in being mentally ill, or suffering a specific diagnosis, even despite evidence to the contrary. A physician’s confirmation can be validating. Overidentification with a diagnosis can risk creating a self-defeating thought process and behaviors, as individuals may be reticent to give up the sick role or assume that healthy behaviors are doomed to fail.

Based on the idea of biological contagion, social contagion is the process by which information, behaviors, or attitudes spread among individuals in close contact. Traditionally, this has occurred only among individuals living in close proximity, but media has made contagion possible among those who are distant. Social media appear to have the potential to spread mental health contagion on an unprecedented scale.

Read more at PsychiatricTimes.com.

Little progress has been made in recent years in expanding the share of facilities offering mental health treatment accessible to LGBTQ young people in the U.S., a new study indicates, even as they face a high risk of problems like depression and suicide.

In an analysis of more than 8,000 facilities in the U.S. that provided mental health services to youth in 2020 – most of which also provided services to adults – researchers found that 28%, or about 2,300, also offered services specifically designed for LGBTQ individuals. That marked a minimal increase from 25% of facilities offering LGBTQ-specific services in 2014, according to the study, which was published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.

Lead study author Kristen Choi, an assistant professor at the UCLA School of Nursing and an associate program director for the university’s National Clinician Scholars Program, says while there has been greater recognition by society of the existence of health disparities based on sexual and gender identity, the new findings show the nation’s mental health care system needs to be much more responsive to begin addressing those gaps.

“We haven’t made a lot of progress in offering tailored services or gender-affirmative services in the mental health sector,” Choi says. “We’ve got a lot of work to do in trying to improve that and making sure that our mental health systems are able to provide for the unique needs of this population.”

Read more at USNews.com.

Rhode Island College’s (RIC) School of Social Work has been awarded a four-year U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration grant bringing in $650,000 in the first year with a possibility of renewal for another three years, totaling $2.6 million.

The Atrévete Hispanic Center for Excellence for Social Work Practice grant is designed to build a pipeline of Latinx students from high schools and community colleges to the Accelerated B.S.W. to M.S.W. program (specializing in clinical social work), recruit and retain Latinx faculty, and build community partnerships to provide experiential learning for the clinical social work students.

RIC Interim Dean of Social Work Jayashree Nimmagadda says this is the first comprehensive grant the school has received that recognizes there is a high need for trained clinical social workers to provide mental and behavioral health services in Hispanic communities.

“It’s about access for these communities to receive culturally and linguistically responsive services,” Nimmagadda says. “This grant will be impactful because it provides resources for mentorship and academic support for Latinx faculty; recruitment and retention of Hispanic high school students to earn a B.S.W. and M.S.W.; and community partnerships that strengthen the School of Social Work’s engagement or pipeline with the Latinx community in Rhode Island.”

The Atrévete grant will allow the School of Social Work to hire a minimum of six Latinx faculty over the next four years to teach the school’s Latinx student population, which is anticipated to comprise 25 percent of the school’s students.

“Recruitment and retention of Latinx faculty is a challenge,” Nimmagadda says. “This grant will allow us to go out and recruit faculty who see themselves as part of our Center for Excellence.” The center would then produce research that yields evidence-based models of clinical and behavioral social work intervention.

The center would also conduct research that explores the cultural adaptation of evidence-based models of clinical assessments and interventions that are a better fit for the needs of the Hispanic community.

Read more at RIC.edu.

On July 20, the Biden-Harris Administration hosted its inaugural Mental Health Summit focused on improving equity and access to behavioral health care for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities. The White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (WHIAANHPI) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hosted this event in recognition of National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, building on the Administration’s investments to connect more Americans to care.

The National Network to Eliminate Disparities in Behavioral Health (NNED) partnered with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA) to support this historic event both virtually and in person in Washington, D.C. The WHIAANHPI Mental Health Summit brought together community leaders; mental health professionals; people with lived experience; researchers; national organizations; and local, state, and federal leaders for the in-person event, and allowed the general public to watch the livestream. The goal of the Summit was to identify innovative solutions and actions across communities and government groups to address persistent and emerging challenges to the mental health and well-being of AANHPI communities.

Given the COVID-19 pandemic, rising anti-Asian hate, and the public health and public safety epidemic of gun violence, AANHPI communities have been deeply impacted by the nation’s mental health crisis. The Summit allowed for conversation to address these and other issues impacting the mental health of and behavioral health services delivery to AANHPI communities, and hear from panelists and audience members about what actions can be taken to tackle these issues.

The Summit featured introductions from federal leaders, a keynote speech, a moderated conversation about advancing equity and mental well-being for AANHPI communities, and four interactive panels. These four panels — focused on the impact of racism and hate crimes on mental health, expanding access and integrating care, strategies for building state and community partnerships, and expanding language access — featured diverse speakers and allowed for audience-directed questions.

“The Summit’s success was the result of the vision and direction set by the WHIAANHPI Commissioners, months of hard work and coordination between SAMHSA and WHIAANHPI, and the exceptional job done by the NNED team in preparing panelists and strategies for participant engagement,” says Dr. Rachele Espiritu, Summit facilitator. “I’m honored to have played a role in raising awareness of AANHPI mental health challenges and opportunities, fostering a sense of community and relationships, and generating actionable ideas at all levels — individual, organizational, community, and systems change. It was a truly meaningful experience.”

Watch the recording of the event!