Integration, Expansion, Community Education – How to Improve Access to Mental Health Services

The facts:

1. Pre-pandemic, less than half of adults with mental health conditions received services..
2. There is a severe shortage of psychiatrists, psychologists, and behavioral health specialists.
3. The need for mental health and substance use services will continue to grow.

Question: How can the health care system do better?

Answer: Workforce integration and expansion, plus community training.

Join BPC as our panel of health care and policy experts discusses how integrating the health care workforce and incentivizing primary care providers to tackle behavioral health will increase the pool of available providers. They will also discuss the merits of covering new types of providers and promising approaches to build a non-licensed force of community members that can contribute to improving access to mental health services.

Note: Miller and Burgos will discuss their February 2021 paper, Enhancing the Capacity of the Mental Health and Addiction Workforce: A Framework, dthat proposes new strategies for addressing community needs.

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Featured Participants

Opening remarks by:

Benjamin F. Miller, Psy.D.
President, Well Being Trust

Anita Burgos, Ph.D.
Senior Health Policy Advisor, U.S. House of Representatives

Panel discussion with:

Regina Benjamin, M.D.
18th U.S. Surgeon General; Founder and CEO, BayouClinic, Inc.

Keris Jän Myrick
Director, Jed Foundation; Co-Director, The Mental Health Strategic Impact Initiative

Shekhar Saxena, M.D.
Professor of the Practice of Global Mental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Moderated by:

Marilyn Serafini
Director of the Health Project, BPC

Read their full bios.

BPC’s Behavioral Health Integration Task Force released recommendations in March 2021 that address the provider shortage through the integration of behavioral health with primary care. This discussion will build on those recommendations.

In light of restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, BPC events have shifted to all remote formats, such as video teleconferences or calls.