July 2020

Greetings,

June has come and gone, but we have much to show for the weeks that have passed.

At the beginning of the month, we saw much of the nation rally in support of Black lives, a long overdue shift in public resolve to build a racially equitable society. Our Center strives to improve access to quality mental health services for all, and we know that Black Americans in particular endure a unique set of mental health concerns stemming from systemic and overt racist structures. With this in mind, we pledge to improve and increase our training and technical assistance offered in relation to these issues.

One of our first actions was meeting with our regional Addiction Technology Transfer Center (ATTC) and Prevention Technology Transfer Center (PTTC) partners and committing our collective energy and resources to these efforts. Our three centers issued the following statement on the matter:

To start, our centers produced a Racial Equity Resource Packet that can be downloaded for free here. The handouts, videos, websites and more listed in this document pertain to behavioral health, SUD, working with children, and discrimination, race and privilege. Please share widely, and note that this resource packet and our pledge mark only the beginning of our commitment to increasing our impact in addressing racial disparities.

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Also in June, we saw our work transition from immediate-term pandemic-related programming to planning for future webinar series, learning communities, training modules and more. Read on for more information on a few of these upcoming opportunities, new resources from the past month, and a picture-perfect staff spotlight.

Be well,

The Team at the Mid-America MHTTC

NEWS & UPDATES

AREA OF FOCUS SPOTLIGHT

Integrated Care

Our Center's integrated care team regrouped in June after organizing and supporting numerous immediate-term pandemic-related trainings. We have much in store for the coming months, including a new monthly webinar series on topics in pediatric integrated care and the first course in a series of online modules covering the basics of integrated care, including how to build systems of integrated care, choosing the right business model, how to treat specific disorders in a clinical setting, and more. The content for the modules will form the basis for more in-depth learning communities we will lead for our region in 2021. Applications for these will begin to go out this fall.

In the meantime, be sure to tune in at 12 p.m. Thursday, July 9, to Providing Mental Health Telehealth Services in Farming and Rural Communities, the second webinar in the series Improving Mental Health Service Access for Farming and Rural Communities co-hosted by the Mountain Plains MHTTC and American Psychological Association. In the July 9 webinar, our integrated care faculty trainer Dr. Holly Roberts will lend her expertise throughout a presentation designed to meet the following goals:

For more information about our integrated care program, click here.

Each newsletter we highlight our work in one of our core training areas: school mental health, integrated behavioral health in primary care, serious mental illness and behavioral health workforce development.

Brenda Bassingthwaite, PhD, BCBA, is an associate professor at the Munroe-Meyer Institute at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and a faculty trainer for the Mid-America MHTTC. Passionate about school mental health, Dr. Bassingthwaite was trained in school psychology and applied behavior analysis at Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital. She was a school psychologist for Iowa’s Heartland Area Education Agency and a licensed psychologist and behavioral health manager for the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital.

Dr. Bassingthwaite also contracts with Omaha Public Schools, providing direct service and training to educational teams serving students with persistent challenging behaviors, mental health concerns, and/or developmental disabilities. As part of this work, she consults with educational leadership teams in promoting and implementing a multi-tiered system of support in behavioral health.

Dr. Bassingthwaite says she is looking forward to “working with districts in navigating supports for teachers and students in these times that are ever-changing (and challenging) with the COVID-19 pandemic."

"We will all be learning together, but through the MHTTC Network, we will be able to provide supports and assistance that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible to our region,” she says.

When she's not working, Dr. Bassingthwaite enjoys digital photography — especially nature photography.

"Photography is one of my forms of meditation," she says. "Most of my life’s stressors are put aside while I begin to focus on nature’s beauty. I listen for what my subject may want to say to me as I’m choosing where to focus and what areas to blur into the background. The true messages are revealed when I am focusing on one aspect, and all of a sudden something else appears in my view that takes me to a new creation. The new subject is often a visiting butterfly or dragonfly, but even just as special is when it is another flower that had been going unnoticed."

Each newsletter we shed light on an exceptional contributor to Mid-America MHTTC's mission.

You have reached the conclusion of this issue. Thank you for reading!

Mid-America MHTTC | 402.552.7697 | MHTTCnetwork.org/midamerica

The Mid-America Mental Health Technology Transfer Center is a SAMHSA-funded program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The Mid-America MHTTC provides training in evidence-based practices to the four-state area of Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. 

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