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FALL 2006 |
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Online
Only H
E A L T H P R O M O T I O N
Rural mental
health program launched this fall
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Stock Photo |
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After five years of
planning and two pilot projects, the Rural Mental Health
Interprofessional Training Program will be offered this fall in three
locations.
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Submitted Article |
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After five years of planning and two
pilot projects, the
Rural Mental Health Interprofessional Training
Program will be offered this fall in three locations.
Dr. Ted Callanan, chair of the Discipline
of Psychiatry and one of the project partners, said the program will
start with on-site visits to three communities for the first two modules
of the program followed by interactive videoconference sessions for the
final four modules offered through 13 two-hour videoconference sessions
held weekly over 10 weeks. The training team will be in Placentia on
September 26, in Harbour Breton September 28, and in Port-aux-Basques on October 4
for on-site visits. Another three programs will be offered starting in
February 2007 in different communities.
“People in rural and remote regions often
have little access to mental health services,” said Dr. Peter Cornish,
director of Memorial’s counselling centre and a project partner. “The
problem is made worse because the health care professionals in these
areas often feel unprepared to manage the complex social, psychological
and psychiatric needs of their communities and their isolated work
environment can result in burnout and high staff turnover rates. Other
professionals in the community, including teachers, clergy, paramedics,
and police officers also feel unprepared and unsupported in their
efforts to respond to mental health crises.”
Despite these shortcomings, the project
team found that rural communities have natural strengths and respond
effectively to community concerns. “Families tend to be supportive of
each other through difficult times, natural networks exist in small
communities, and health care professionals are open to working
collaboratively,” said Dr. Cornish. Other project partners are: Dr. Cheri
Bethune, family medicine; Dr. Vernon Curran, director of academic
research and development in the Faculty of Medicine; Dr. Lynda Younghusband, university counseling centre, and; and Dr. Elizabeth
Church, Faculty of Education, Mount St. Vincent University. Dr. Olga
Health has been hired to work with the project, which is part of the
overall inter-professional education curriculum being developed by
Memorial’s Centre for Collaborative Health Professional Education.
Dr. Callanan explained that the rural
mental health program consists of six modules. The first two, delivered
on-site, are inter-professional collaboration and collaborative practice
in mental health, and building and maintaining productive relationships
with patients. The modules offered by videoconference are on stages of
change/motivational interviewing for substance abuse treatment, solution
focused interviewing for working with adolescents and their families,
cognitive behavioral interventions for depression and anxiety, and
development inter-professional assertive community treatment and crisis
management programming.
“Each session has a similar structure,”
said Dr. Callanan. “At the initial session, participants are introduced
to the skills and content for that area through interactive
presentations and modeling. Experts present and discuss their own cases,
and the participants are provided with opportunities to apply and
practice the skills through small group interactive activities, such as
role-playing. Following this introductory session, the emphasis shifts
to encourage interaction and inter-professional collaboration. A small
group format used for discussing prepared cases and the cases themselves
are structured so as to promote the development of an inter-professional
perspective. This provides participants with the opportunity to learn
more of the roles and perspectives of their colleagues and the provision
of collaborative mental health care. In the final session for each
module, participants are encouraged to present their own cases.
The pilot projects for this program were
delivered first in Twillingate and then in Bonavista. “Participants
reported a high level of confidence in their ability to work
collaboratively with other professions, to deal with situations of
conflict, and develop interdisciplinary care plans for patients,” said
Dr. Cornish. “According to pre- and post-testing, participants increased
their belief that patients receiving team care are more likely to be
treated as whole persons. Of the 18 mental health issues addressed,
eating disorders, addictions, sexual assault and child sexual abuse saw
the largest increase in participant confidence.”
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