APA Honors Innovative Mental Health Programs

Abstract

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Association NewsFull AccessAPA Honors Innovative Mental Health ProgramsMark MoranMark MoranSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:2 Oct 2009https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.44.19.0024Call it “psychiatry without borders.”From psychiatric treatment for those receiving hospice care, to supported employment and smoking cessation for the seriously mentally ill people in the community, APA's 2009 Psychiatric Services Achievement Award winners are a showcase of innovative treatment programs providing psychiatric services outside the traditional settings of hospital and clinic.The awards will be presented this year on Thursday, October 8, at APA's Institute on Psychiatric Services in New York. The goal of the awards, which were established in 1949, is to recognize national models of creative service delivery to mentally ill or disabled individuals.Each program that applies for the award is graded by the Achievement Awards Committee on criteria that are spelled out in the application. The highest-ranking applications are selected for a site review to be written by a member of the district branch where the program is located.The chair of the 2009 Psychiatric Services Achievement Awards Committee is Beatrice Kovasznay, M.D.First-place, or Gold, awards are given to one program in two categories—academically or institutionally sponsored programs, and community-based programs. Both winners receive $10,000, with award funds being provided this year by Pfizer Inc.Silver and Bronze awards are given to programs in either academic or community settings. The Silver Award winner receives $7,500 from Pfizer, while the Bronze Award winner receives $5,000.Pfizer has been participating in the program since 1981.This year's Gold Award winner for an institutionally sponsored program is the Palliative Care Psychiatric Program at San Diego Hospice and the Institute for Palliative Medicine.According to the site review written by psychiatrist Alexander Green, M.D., the program investigates better assessments and treatments for depression, delirium, and other mental health concerns to improve outcomes for those with advanced life-threatening illnesses. It is directed by Scott Irwin, M.D., Ph.D.“Although there were approximately 1.4 million patients under hospice care, in 4,300 programs worldwide, there were essentially no psychiatrists involved in direct, regular on-site clinical care,” Green wrote of the genesis of the program. “A light bulb went on in the mind of this young professional [Irwin] at the beginning of his career. [He] volunteered his services to build a unit at the San Diego hospice, in the hope that funding would come. It did—he has received funding for the program from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Palliative Care Research Center, the Arch Stone Foundation, and the John A. Hartford Center of Excellence in Geriatric Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.”Research in the Palliative Care Psychiatric Program has included alternative routes for pain-medication administration, alternatives to pain medication, the use of short-term stimulants in depression in the hospice setting, issues regarding voluntarily stopping oral intake, unrecognized cognitive impairments, new screening techniques for underrecognized depression and delirium, and psychiatry residency education in end-of-life issues.The program also educates institute faculty, palliative medicine fellows, clinical staff, nurses, and international visitors. The team now includes five part-time psychiatrists.The Gold Award for community-based programs this year goes to the Thresholds Supported Employment Program in Chicago.“This innovative program is fully integrated within a mental health clinic that provides psychiatric treatment, case management, and psychosocial rehabilitation services to its patients,” wrote psychiatrist Lisa Rone, M.D., in her site review of Thresholds. “The program helps with employment when members are recovering from their illness and desire to be employed. The Supported Employment Program is considered a direct recovery-focused therapy as well as a point of engagement for other services, such as dual-diagnosis treatment....“This program has a unique ability to work with employees that may not want to disclose their mental illness. Employment specialists discuss specific approaches a member may take in a job interview to prepare and rehearse them. The employment specialists also work directly with employers to reduce stigma regarding the chronically mentally ill by having employers that have employed Thresholds members meet with prospective new employers to discuss their experiences with the member employees.”A Silver Award for second place for either a community or institutional program will be presented to the CHOICES (Consumers Helping Others Improve Their Condition by Ending Smoking) Program of the Department of Psychiatry's Division of Addiction at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, N.J.The award is in recognition of the program's creative approach to smoking cessation among seriously mentally ill people. Kovasznay noted that the program uses individuals who have experienced serious mental illness and have also been smokers to act as peer counselors in helping patients quit smoking.“This program focuses on an important issue in an underserved population,” wrote Jacob Jacoby, M.D., in his site review of CHOICES.“ This is a population where cigarette smoking is the norm, but where a focus on stopping this potentially life-threatening addiction is either ignored or underemphasized to an alarming degree.... This program represents an early, perhaps pioneer development in sending counselors who themselves have been cigarette smokers ... to interact in varying treatment modalities with other nicotine-using, psychiatrically affected patients.”A Bronze Award for third place goes to the Children and Adolescent Services Program at the South Bronx Mental Health Council Inc. (SBMHC) in New York. The program was recognized for its expansion of an evidence-based, culturally sensitive model for improving home and school life through promotion of positive behavioral changes and social skills development.The evidence-based model employed by the program is the Community Parent Education Program (COPE).“The SBMHC sought a model that would challenge [staff] to improve their skills and provide a critical service to the local children before they were identified as clinical cases,” wrote psychiatrist L. Mark Russakoff, M.D., in his site review of the program. “In collaboration with five other outpatient programs in the Bronx, the SBMHC chose COPE as a means to help the parents of children who were coming to the attention of school officials or others. The program is a group intervention, which permits exceptional learning opportunities for the participants (including staff, patients, and parents) and the fiscal efficiencies associated with group programs. It has been cited as a model program by the New York State Office of Mental Health.”More information is posted at<www.psych.org/achievementawards>.▪ ISSUES NewArchived