2012 News Releases

The Department of Mental Health Announces new Regional Executive Officer for the West

The Department of Mental Health is pleased to announce Denise Norbury, RN, MS, DBA, as the new Western Region Regional Executive Officer (REO) effective February 1, 2012.  This position will expand Dr. Norbury’s current duties as REO for the southwest region where she has been responsible for facility operations, coordination of care, and the overall mental health and substance systems for the region.

The Divisions of Alcohol and Drug Abuse and Comprehensive Psychiatric Services are consolidating the current western and southwest regions into a single Western region.  In her new role, Dr. Norbury will oversee Northwest Missouri Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center in St. Joseph, Center for Behavioral Medicine in Kansas City, and Southwest Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center in El Dorado Springs.  She will also work closely with the Community Mental Health Centers and Affiliates in the consolidated service area.

Ms. Connie Kirby, who assumed the role of Acting REO during this transition, will return to and continue her position as Chief of Adult Community Operations.

Kristina Larsson:  January State Employee of the Month

Kristina Larsson is considered a “resource queen” by her co-workers at the Jefferson County location of the St. Louis Regional Office. As a Service Coordinator II, Kristina is a tremendous advocate for her consumers and is recognized by parents and guardians for her persistence and ability to locate resources. For her work, Kristina has been selected the DMH Employee of the Month for November 2011.

Kristina recently successfully advocated for community placement funds for a consumer by coordinating a unique financial arrangement involving the use of Adoption Subsidy funding. She worked with the Children’s Division to ensure necessary supports were in place for the consumer, including home modifications. Her transition plan for this consumer was cited as exceptional by the Utilization Review Committee.

Kristina’s Individual Support Plans (ISP) have been used as team examples. She researches diagnostic information and provides great detail in the plan.  According to her supervisor, her plans are very detailed and give the readers a great snapshot of the individual.  Kristina works hard to get to know the people she is supporting and it shows in the quality of the plans she writes.

Kristina has worked for the Regional Office for 5 years.

DMH Employee of the Month, November 2011
Kristina Larsson, Service Coordinator II
St. Louis Regional Office (Jefferson County)

Congratulations Kristina!

NOTE: Nominations for DMH Employee of the Month (EOM) should be submitted through the director’s office at each DMH facility.  Nominations received by the 15th of the month will be considered for EOM for that month.  Nominations received after the 15th will be considered for the following month.

Missouri colleges train professors, campus workers in mental health first aid

ALAN SCHER ZAGIER Associated Press, January 07, 2012

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Mention first aid on a college campus, and most people will point toward the student health center, or perhaps an emergency medical kit in the nearest classroom or residence hall.

University of Missouri psychologist Christy Hutton has a different definition. As coordinator of a new Mental Health First Aid training program, she and partner Sharon Thomas-Parks are teaching campus employees who come in close contact with students — from professors and deans to advisers and admissions officers — how to better recognize and respond to signs of mental illness.

The training effort began a decade ago in Australia, with counselors in Missouri and Maryland among the first to bring the program stateside in recent years.

"Missouri is on the cutting edge of doing some really important work on mental health," said Hutton, outreach coordinator at the campus counseling center.

The nearly 200 people who participated in a 12-hour training session at the Columbia campus last week heard a barrage a statistics from the two women that drive home the pervasiveness of mental health problems on campus.

According to the pair, 75 percent of mental disorders develop before age 25. College students are 70 percent more likely to develop mental illness than other adults, and nearly 10 times more likely to have a drug or alcohol problem. They're also far less likely to receive treatment.

"You're more likely to come across someone who needs mental health first aid than someone who needs the Heimlich maneuver or CPR," said Thomas-Parks, a former university psychologist who is now a private consultant.

Throw in student stress over grades, finances, romances, job prospects and more, and the risk factors only escalate. The American College Health Association reports that between 28 percent and 37 percent of college students seriously consider suicide, which is the second leading cause of death among those ages 15 to 24.

Organizers hope that the sessions will also encourage participants to openly discuss mental health issues, which often remain on the margins, even after the mass shootings on campuses such as Virginia Tech and Columbine High School, Thomas-Parks said. The program is also offered to churches and community groups.

"Stigma is the biggest barrier for people with mental illness," she said. "Fighting the stigma surrounding mental illness is often worse than fighting mental illness itself."

The training helps participants learn how to identify depression, anxiety, psychosis, substance abuse and other problems among students and co-workers. It offers additional resources, from websites to crisis hotlines, tries to puncture some of the common misconceptions surrounding mental health problems, and encourages campus employees to feel comfortable stepping outside their areas of expertise — if only to encourage a student or colleague to seek help, not diagnose or treat the problem.

"We're not going to teach you how to be a therapist," Hutton told participants.

Lynn Carruth-Rasmussen, academic advising director for the College of Education, called the training "extremely helpful, and much needed."

"In the advising world, there's sometimes the perception that we just deal with students on an academic level," she said. "But we come into contact with all of these types of issues. We want students to know that we're here, and we're available."

From role-playing exercises to candid conversations about suicide, the training exercises made participants feel comfortable discussing issues that often invite discomfort, said Michelle Bollinger, a career services coordinator in the College of Education.

"It's been so taboo in the past," she said. "And now it's in the open."
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Missouri leads the way in coordinating mental and physical care

By J. Michael Keller, special to the Beacon       
Posted 4:38 pm Fri., 1.6.12
Missouri is quickly becoming a pre-eminent leader in improving the coordination of care for people with serious mental illness and co-occurring, life threatening medical conditions, such as hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and COPD.

Our state doesn't often find itself in the vanguard of change. We're used to being on the lower half of the leader boards when it comes to the health of our citizens. So, how then did we become a sought-after expert in mental health care delivery?

Most states have seen their mental health system infrastructure crack and crumble under the heavy strain of budget cuts. We in Missouri have also sustained painful cuts, to be sure. But instead of trying to survive by simply scaling back, mental health leaders here have spent the past several years working together across the system to use the resources we do have in the smartest ways possible -- ways that serve our clients and the state's bottom line.

Missouri's efforts to effect life-changing initiatives for people with mental illness and other serious health conditions are driven by a powerful, collaborative environment between the provider community and the Missouri Department of Mental Health.

This partnership took root five years ago when one of Missouri's mental health leaders, Dr. Joe Parks, chief clinical director for the Missouri Department of Mental Health, co-published a benchmark study that shook the mental health community across America. "Morbidity and Mortality in People with Serious Mental Illness" found that those served by our public mental health systems die, on average, 25 years earlier than the general population. More than 80 percent of those premature deaths are due to treatable medical conditions caused by preventable risk factors such as smoking, obesity, substance abuse and inadequate access to medical care.

Numerous other studies showed that people with serious mentally illness and chronic health conditions are more likely than not to receive no medical care whatsoever for those conditions. Both providers and state officials in Missouri came to understand that our system was designed to treat people in emergency situations instead of keeping them from getting acutely ill in the first place. This was not only harmful to those we serve, it also cost taxpayers millions in avoidable costs.

One analysis in our state actually identified a client who showed up at emergency rooms 250 times in a year -- sometimes in multiple emergency rooms in the same day. It would have been cheaper to hire a caseworker assigned 24 hours a day to only him.

Those of us in the mental health community knew we had to do something. We knew we had to act fast (people were dying and the system was crashing financially). And we knew we needed each other to accomplish the kind of systemic change that could turn this problem around. It's like Helen Keller said: "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."

There are numerous examples of this collaboration over the past several years, including the establishment of the Behavioral Health Network of Greater St. Louis, dedicated to developing an accessible and coordinated system of mental health care through eastern Missouri. We also worked together to help the state implement a cutting-edge disease management program for those receiving mental health services.

In late 2010, the mental health department, MO Health Net and other stakeholders launched a project targeting 3,700 identified high-cost Medicaid clients with chronic medical conditions who were eligible for but not using mental health services. The state sent these clients letters inviting them to enroll in community mental health so we could coordinate and manage both their medical and psychiatric conditions. The hope for the project is that we'll save money by engaging clients in pro-active care that keeps them healthier.

Missouri is continuing it collaborative efforts to reduce inpatient hospitalization and emergency room visits for persons with serious mental illnesses and serious medical conditions. We are confident these efforts will save millions in taxpayer dollars. But more importantly, such efforts will surely ease untold human suffering.

"Our work together is bearing some great fruit," Dr. Karl Wilson, president and CEO of the Crider Health Center, recently said. "It's like planting an orchard a long time ago and after a lot of nurturing, there are some beautiful sustaining payoffs now."

Federal departments are giving us a green light and expediting Missouri's initiatives because we're a model of what collaboration can accomplish. And other states are asking key people from here to explain how we so quickly effected such change. This is unfamiliar terrain for Missouri. No one has ever asked our opinion before. I think we should be proud to give it.

J. Michael Keller is the executive director of the Independence Center in St. Louis. One of the nation's most successful examples of the Clubhouse Model of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, the center helps adults with serious and persistent mental illness to live and work in the community by focusing on their strengths and abilities, not their illness.