Redesigned and reorganized to improve your experience

We are excited to announce the launch of our updated Behavioral Health Hub! We hope that this redesign will make it easier for you find and use resources to aid you in managing behavioral health needs in your practice.

Content is organized by topic for easy browsing

Interior pages have a navigation bar to quickly jump to specific sections

Medication charts have a filtered search bar which returns only rows that contain the search input text

Revisit tips of the month from prior issues of the Behavioral Health Bulletin

Join us for our next Mind Matters meeting!

We are excited to welcome Craig Bryan, PsyD, ABPP as our next Mind Matters speaker!

Dr. Bryan, renowned suicidologist and trauma psychologist, will challenge current wisdom on suicide prevention and propose alternative perspectives to guide suicide prevention efforts at our next Mind Matters meeting on September 25, 2024.

By the conclusion of the meeting, participants will understand the relationship between mental health conditions and suicide, the multiple pathways model of suicide, and be able to identify the five levels of the prevention through design model.

If you have a case you'd like to share for consultation and support at this or a future Mind Matters meeting, please email Anitha Iyer, PhD, Course Director.

Remember that you can view recordings and slides of previous meetings on our website. Past meetings have covered treating depression and anxiety in primary care, substance use, eating and feeding disorders, and more.

Most recently, Dr. Eyal Shemesh spoke about the challenges and limitations in routine depression screening.

Mount Sinai Health System’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion offers some tips for caring for patients with disabilities. General guiding principles are to put the person first, respect individual agency, and ask rather than assume.

Speak directly to patients (not companions, if present), presume patients are competent to handle their own care, offer assistance and wait for acceptance and instructions rather than attempting to help without consent. Ask the patient questions if you need clarification on anything and use person-first and inclusive language.

In addition, when working with patients who are blind or low vision:

• Verbally identify yourself and others in the room, explain procedures before beginning treatment, and inform the patient when you are leaving the room
• Describe the physical environment: doors, steps, ramps, bathroom locations, etc.
• Ask before you help and before you touch to offer assistance
• Provide written materials in the patient’s preferred format (CD, Braille, large print)

When working with patients who are deaf or hard of hearing:

• Ask how to best communicate
• Look directly at the patient when speaking so they can see your mouth and speak normally and clearly
• Minimize background noise and glare
• Provide supplementary written materials

Sign language interpreting and real-time captioning services are available 24/7 and should be provided promptly if requested. Family members should not be used to interpret. Speak to the patient, not the interpreter.

When working with patients who use a wheelchair or other mobility/assistive device:



• Ensure there is a clear path of access
• Provide accessible equipment as needed
• Do not separate patients from their assistive devices
• Respect personal space, including wheelchair and assistive devices

Long COVID and mental health and wellbeing

As we continue to reckon with the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, long COVID has emerged as a chronic condition in which people experience various symptoms following SARS-CoV-2 infection lasting at least 3 months post-infection. An article in BJPsych Open discusses why long COVID can lead to poor mental health outcomes.

In addition to anxiety, depression, and brain fog, individuals living with long COVID face a number of barriers to mental health and wellbeing. Fatigue and reduced engagement with daily activities may leave an individual lacking a sense of purpose and achievement, as well as increased social isolation. Poor understanding from others about the reality of living with this condition, uncertainty about the trajectory of the illness, and limited care options can further contribute to poor mental health outcomes in patients with long COVID.

The authors of this study emphasize the need for accessible and patient-centered care in the management of long COVID. Perhaps their most important takeaway for individual providers, however, is that "interactions where people felt listened to and believed were greatly valued, and empathy from health professionals, even when faced with limited treatment and referral options was important."

Learn more

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai serves as a hub site for the NIH Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative and is currently recruiting participants for a study of a possible treatment of long COVID.

Ensure your patients are aware that their insurance provider must cover behavioral health benefits with no session caps. This quick guide explains how to find treatment and services and includes information about understanding insurance coverage and benefits.

Epic users can include this information as part of the After Visit Summary by using dot phrase .behavioralhealthresourceguide.

It's no secret that there is high stigma surrounding mental health which can be incredibly harmful to people living with mental health conditions and interfere with their treatment and recovery.

The CDC offers a variety of provider resources on mental health literacy, including a CME course from the University of Texas at Austin on stigma-free communication about mental health.

Spanish language resources from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

NIMH has patient-friendly information about a variety of mental health topics in Spanish. Share this information with Spanish-speaking patients to help them understand any relevant topics or diagnoses.

Information to share with your patients: long COVID