Black hawk-grundy cmhc - black hawk-grundy mental health center, INC. (bhgmhc), serving the residents of black hawk and grundy counties in northeast iowa, proposes to increase access and…

Black hawk-grundy cmhc - black hawk-grundy mental health center, INC. (bhgmhc), serving the residents of black hawk and grundy counties in northeast iowa, proposes to increase access and availability of comprehensive, integrated and enhanced services for adults with severe mental illness (SMI) or CO-occurring substance use and mental illness (COD), and youth with severe emotional disturbance (SED). Iowa is 44TH in the united states for behavior workforce availability (hrsa) and faces a shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds (2.1 per 100,000, treatment advocacy center). Integrating mental health and substance use care, enhancing services for youth, and expanding community-support and peer support access is vital to meeting the needs of our community. The project will serve 235 individuals in year 1 and 240 individuals in year 2, for a total of 475 individuals over the grant period. Proposed evidence-based interventions include peer support services, individual therapy, seeking safety CO-occurring disorder (COD) treatment groups, and case management to aid individuals in addressing the social determinants of health impact on treatment success and well-being. The goals of the program are: (1) expand the provision of school based mental health services to SED youth to reduce the impact of mental health symptoms, resulting in increased access to care, improved functioning, and reduced symptom presentation with services provide by a new full-time mental health therapist; (2) increase the number of SMI individuals receiving community support (outreach) services from two new community support specialists and a registered nurse; (3) increase the availability and hours of the peer support recovery center to serve adults with SMI by adding two new half-time peer support specialists; (4) provide integrated COD services using evidence-based treatments with services from two new full-time mental health therapists; (5) administer a sdoh questionnaire to all new patients seen at the mental health center with follow-up to be conducted to two full-time case managers.