This 12-week online learning collaborative will introduce participants to telehealth with a focus on how to get started. Even before COVID-19, telehealth offers a ready to use tool that can increase access to care for mental health and help you connect with new patients and augment care for existing ones. But now amidst COVID-19, using telehealth is essential to connect patients to care. But like all tools, telehealth can at first appear complex to approach and this learning collaborative is designed to offer you to knowledge and skills to feel confident and ready to begin offering virtual care for SMI patients.

Instructor: John Torous, MD, MBI, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

For complete details visit: SMIadviser.org/telemental-health-oct

This 12-week online learning collaborative will serve as a virtual community for participants to gain knowledge of evidence-based models of care and receive support and feedback on how to implement those models to effectively improve physical outcomes in patients with Serious Mental Illnesses (SMI).

Instructor: Benjamin Druss, MD, MPH, Emory University

For complete details visit: SMIadviser.org/whole-health

This 12-week online learning collaborative is intended to help you develop a step-by-step plan for bringing peer support into an existing behavioral health agency or practice, in a manner that enhances services. Each participant will develop the essential documents and tools for designing a plan to introduce peer support into a provider agency.

Instructor: Patrick Hendry, Mental Health America

For complete details visit: SMIadviser.org/integrating-peers

This 12-week online learning collaborative is best suited for mental health professionals with existing peer support service programs. During the course, you will explore how to measure and maintain quality in peer services through the development and implementation of quality improvement standards. Each participant will design a behavioral health project using peer support services and develop fidelity and outcome measures for the peer support component.

Instructor: Patrick Hendry, Mental Health America

For complete details visit: SMIadviser.org/peer-quality

This 12-week online learning collaborative is designed to give participants advanced skills and knowledge to develop and implement comprehensive psychiatric mental health nursing assessments in a variety of health care and community settings.  Content will include a review of psychiatric diagnoses and symptoms along with comorbid medical conditions and complications of patients with serious mental illnesses. Discussion of assessment and monitoring strategies for medical and psychiatric diagnoses will enhance the understanding and skills of participants.  The applied skills and knowledge obtained in this course will provide a basis for establishing effective care that will identify and address a variety of health care problems and risks encountered in patients with serious mental illnesses and support patients in recovery.

Instructor: Donna Rolin, PhD, APRN, University of Texas at Austin

For complete details visit: SMIadviser.org/nursing-assessment

This 12-week online learning collaborative will introduce participants to telehealth with a focus on how to get started. Even before COVID-19, telehealth offers a ready to use tool that can increase access to care for mental health and help you connect with new patients and augment care for existing ones. But now amidst COVID-19, using telehealth is essential to connect patients to care. But like all tools, telehealth can at first appear complex to approach and this learning collaborative is designed to offer you to knowledge and skills to feel confident and ready to begin offering virtual care for SMI patients.

Instructor: John Torous, MD, MBI, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

For complete details visit: SMIadviser.org/telemental-health-nov

Clozapine can be very rewarding to prescribe, since about half of patients with prior poor treatment response get substantially better with clozapine. This medication can result in major improvements in patients’ functioning and quality of life. This 12-week virtual learning collaborative is intended for clinicians who want to prescribe more clozapine or build a clozapine program that they will direct. Through the 12-week activity, participants will increase access to clozapine using the following steps: involve and gain support from members of a clozapine team, assess patient eligibility for clozapine, lead the care team for tracking of side effects and response and delivery of clozapine, ensure provision of education for patients or families, and routinely track panels of clozapine patients. By the end of the course, participants will have increased appropriate access to clozapine among their patient panel or the panels of clinicians who they supervise. And, they will have procedures in place that facilitate clozapine use on an ongoing basis, making clozapine as easy to prescribe as other psychotropic medications.

Instructors:

• Robert O. Cotes, MD, Emory University
• Jonathan Meyer, MD, University of California, San Diego

For complete details visit: SMIadviser.org/building-clozapine-practice

This 12-week virtual learning collaborative focuses on training the clinician to use the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) and the Role Functioning Scale (RFS) as structured assessment tools to improve the quality of care for patients with serious mental illness. Clinicians will gain the expertise needed to administer the BPRS to assess symptoms by rating actual BPRS patient interviews and discussing their ratings in comparison to the “gold standard” consensus ratings. Participants will learn to use the RFS to assess daily functioning and use both symptom ratings and assessments of functioning as part of an evidence-based treatment approach for improving patient outcomes. Special attention will be placed on how to conduct these assessments remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, this course will help clinicians to develop and implement a Measurement-Based Care (MBC) model that can be incorporated into an agency’s clinical flow through the use of a data tracking system, be useful to multiple clinical disciplines, and help improve short-term and long-term patient outcomes.

Instructor: Joseph Ventura, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles

For complete details visit: SMIadviser.org/symptom-funct-assess

Data have shown that patients benefit from the social interaction, the universality and the instillation of hope that group psychotherapy (GP) offers. This webinar will give the clinician valuable information about conducting GP and clinicians will be reminded of this effective, evidence-based practice which may be under-considered for use in their practices. It will be demonstrated how this therapeutic treatment modality allows the clinician to conduct therapy in a microcosm of society as their patients learn skills to interact with persons in a more successful manner to enhance functioning outside the clinician’s offices. Conducting GP can allow clinicians to assess how efficacious medications may be in aiding patient behaviors. How GP can assist with integrated medical and physical care will be discussed. Strategies to improve the practice of GP and/or to stimulate the introduction or re-introduction of this modality into attendees’ practices will be presented.

Presenter: Leslie Oleck MSN, RN, PMHNP-BC, PMHCNS-BC, LMFT, Indiana University

For complete details visit: SMIadviser.org/group-therapy

Many individuals who develop a first episode of psychosis in their teens or early 20s experience a disruption in their education. Many still have scholarly and professional aspirations. While evidence-based interventions to assist these individuals in obtaining and maintaining employment are available, the development of formal educational support has lagged behind.   This webinar will focus on supported education, as it has evolved in the RAISE-ETP NAVIGATE program.  The challenges of four groups of students will be addressed—high schoolers, college students, graduate students, and those interested in obtaining a GED or technical training.  Relevant research will be reviewed, and overarching principles to guide interventions with students recovering from a recent experience of psychosis will be presented. Practical tips and resources will also be offered.

Attendees will have an opportunity to participate in Q&A.

Presenter: Dr. Shirley Glynn, PhD, UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

For complete details visit: https://med.stanford.edu/peppnet/education/upcoming-webinars.html

A peer respite is a short-term voluntary program that provides community-based, non-clinical support to people experiencing a psychiatric/emotional crisis. Peer respites are staffed by peers 24 hours per day and operate in homelike environments. Stays can vary based on the needs of the individual; a typical day can consist of attending peer support groups, receiving one to one and/or group support, resource attainment based on the desired goals of the person, shared meals and activities or quite place to recoup from their current situation. The peer respite model operates as a cost-effective crisis diversion for individuals labeled as living with a mental health challenge and experiencing psychosocial stressors. As a crisis diversion model guest’s report that short term stays at a respite house prevent psychiatric emergency services, mental health urgent cares, hospital admissions, homelessness and/or jail.

Presenter: Guyton Colantuono, Project Return Peer Support Network

For complete details visit: SMIadviser.org/peer-respites