Monitor on Psychology - April 2012 - (Page 20)

Government RELATIONS UPDATE A boost for integrated care Federal funding is helping to integrate psychology into health care and build a more skilled psychology workforce. BY AMY NOVOTNEY W hen patients visit any one of northwest Arkansas’s three Community Clinic locations, they get more than standard medical care. Thanks to three years of federal funding, a psychology doctoral student is now on board to check for behavior or mental health problems that may be contributing to a patient’s physical symptoms. As a result, patients in for routine check-ups at this community health center leave with a better understanding of how to stick to their diet and medication regimens and new mothers get brief counseling on stress and depression at their postpartum appointments. The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration awarded a Graduate Psychology Education grant to the University of Arkansas’s clinical psychology training program. It has allowed the university to support four psychology doctoral students in the integrated behavioral health portion of the program, bringing the total number to eight. The students work with physicians, nurses, dieticians and medical personnel to provide behavioral health services to Community Clinic patients who might not otherwise seek care. GPE trainees also provide workshops on behavioral health topics for the community and write newspaper articles about mental health concerns. A preliminary evaluation of the program by training director Ana Bridges, PhD, shows that behavioral health interventions offered by psychology graduate students are helping bring patients’ distress down to subclinical levels — even though students typically only spend between 10 and 30 minutes with patients. The GPE program is also improving awareness of mental health issues among other health-care professionals, says Kathy Grisham, executive director of Community Clinic. “Our providers are to the point where they don’t really want to practice unless they know there’s a behavioral health specialist that can help them that day with services,” Grisham says. “That is quite a remarkable shift in the way we practice medicine.” The Arkansas training program is one of 20 GPE grants awarded in 2010 to institutions working to improve care for the nation’s underserved and low-income populations, including economically disadvantaged older adults, children, chronically ill people and victims of abuse, trauma and disasters, says Nina G. Levitt, EdD, associate executive director for APA’s Education Government Relations Office. “These grants represent the range and depth of psychology training to address the mental and behavioral health needs of our nation’s underserved communities,” Levitt says. “The interdisciplinary approach to training ensures a competent workforce for integrated health care, which is especially effective among these populations.” Meeting families where they are Psychology interns and postdoctoral fellows at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles are also learning to provide culturally competent mental health services to an underserved population through a $190,000 GPE grant. Nearly 30 interns and fellows in the University of Southern California’s Child and Pediatric Psychology program are trained and provide evidence-based mental health care within the hospital’s behavioral health clinics. Because nearly 75 percent of the families served by the program are Latino, students receive a grounding in cultural competency and learn to speak Spanish fluently through individualized language training and individual and group supervision conducted in Spanish, says Sara Sherer, PhD, the program’s training director. Participants also learn evidencebased practices in psychology that best address the mental health needs of the children served by the hospital. They receive certification in programs such as Incredible Years (a series of interventions that promote social and emotional competence and prevent conduct problems in high risk populations) and Child-Parent Psychotherapy (a traumafocused intervention for children from birth to age 5.) The program has also directed funds from its GPE grant to faculty 20 MONITOR ON PSYCHOLOGY • APRIL 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Monitor on Psychology - April 2012

Monitor on Psychology - April 2010
Letters
President’s Column
Contents
From the CEO
Internship Shortage Continues
Mental Health Services Remain Scarce at Community Colleges
Apa Weighs in on the Constitutionality of Life Without Parole for Juvenile Offenders
Apa Praises Court’s Support for Equality
New Mobile App Answers Psychologists’ Clinical Questions
Nih Offers Free Web Resources for Psychologist Researchers
New and Improved Psyclink
In Brief
Government Relations Update
Time Capsule
Questionnaire
Random Sample
Judicial Notebook
Early Career Psychology
Psychologist Profile
Coal Miners’ Dilemma
The Science of Political Advertising
Science Watch
Science Directions
More Support Needed for Trauma Interventions
The Case Against Spanking
Innovative Psychology at the High School Level
Speaking of Education
Apa Divisions Reach Out to New Psychologists
New Journal Editors
A Home Base for Multiple Fields
Division Spotlight
American Psychological Foundation
Awards and Funding Opportunities
Personalities

Monitor on Psychology - April 2012