Making Mental Health Care Accessible and Responsive: a call to action.

At my agency, Family and Children's Service of the Capital Region, we are currently re-designing our services to provide more accessibility for our EAP and other clinical counseling clients.  

Only 36% of people living with a mental health disorder receive treatment for that disorder (National Institute of Mental Health). We know that this statistic rings true for our local region and our EAP members as well. In general, people suffering from a mental health disorder do not reach out for help, or they wait until it gets really bad to reach out.  

So, how does an agency try to bend this trend and increase the utilization of mental health services, truly serving more people in need?

At our agency, phasing it in this year, we will start to try to "bend this trend," by providing telephone, chat and email service.  This service will be more immediate and easier to access. Clients will no longer access service by calling us and and then waiting for a scheduled face-to-face appointment a week later.  Calls will be answered by counselors and they will be provided service immediately if they need it. 

If they want to call us about their issue and receive support on the phone for 20 min, they will get it.  If they want to chat to us from work on their lunch break about the anxiety they are having at work, they will be able to do it.  If they want to email us to simply ask for resources on parenting, they can do that too.  In all cases we will provide them with the service they ask for, however they choose to ask for it, and when they want it.   We will be tracking our utilization and hope to see it go up drastically, as we know that by using the old school in-person counseling model exclusively, we are missing the majority of the people that need help.

The consumer of today needs and in fact demands much more.  Everything else we consume is offered how and where we want it.  Pizza at our doorsteps, groceries and clothes in one big box store, books and movies on-demand online.  The mental health consumer of today wants service in the same way.

It's up to us, mental health administrators and managers, to figure out how to provide high quality, clinically appropriate care in multiple ways. Waiting and insisting that clients come to us for care is not only unrealistic, but irresponsible. Face-to-face counseling will always be needed and in fact, is preferable, but we need to figure out better ways to engage MORE people, to engage them at lower level, less intense service levels as well. Otherwise, we will continue to miss the 64% of people that live with a mental health disorder every year but never access care.

Let’s start thinking bravely and figure out what makes mental health care accessible and responsive.  Next, let’s not get hung up on, “but I don’t know how to do that (ie social media, online, apps, texting, email service),” and instead find someone who does know how to do it (there are many of them) or take an online course at the TeleMentalHealth Institute to educate yourself on how to make the needed adjustments.

Not only will you be better fulfilling your mission to serve, but in the end, you will have more business and better business. 

photo credit: ~C4Chaos via photopin cc