Primary Care Behavioral Health
Background
As the integration of behavioral health clinicians into primary care continues to grow, the US is facing a staffing crisis. The number of training programs turning out new behavioral health professionals who have the skills to work in primary care is woefully inadequate. A transitional experience is needed to give trained mental health professionals the substantive orientation they need to become behavioral health professionals in primary care. Clinical programs that have transferred mental health professionals straight from specialty mental health centers into primary care have often failed in the past.
The Certificate Program in Primary Care Behavioral Health:
- Prepares mental health professionals for success as primary care behavioral health clinicians
- Offers free experience for primary care physicians in the clinical routines of integrated care
- Consists of 36 hours of didactic and interactive training
- Is delivered in 6 full-day workshops, one Friday per month for six months
- Grants continuing education credits to program certificate recipients (participants who complete all 6 workshops)
- Offers Distance Learning Sites (PC-based using Adobe Connect)
- Offers Synchronous experience for maximum interaction and Asynchronous recording for making up missed sessions or further review
- Is collaboratively taught by a faculty of primary care behavioral health clinicians and primary care physicians from the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School
- Allows participants to be part of an actual or virtual “site” for discussion and role play
- Enables participants to access program documentation, notes and discussion board via password-protected web portal