The Montana Emergency COVID-19 project: Increase capacity to provide behavioral health crisis services, including telehealth, assessment, treatment and recovery to individuals impacted by COVID-19. - The Montana Emergency COVID-19 project will strengthen the capacity of nine counties and four tribal behavioral health programs to provide mental health and substance use services, including crisis services, during COVID-19 pandemic to individuals with serious emotional disturbance (SED) for youth, serious mental illness (SMI) for adults, and substance use disorder (SUD) for youth and adults. Funding will also be utilized to support healthcare workers and others with less severe mental disorders who are impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our state strategy involves contracting with nine counties who work through their existing partnership networks to fund licensed / state approved mental health and substance abuse treatment programs who will provide direct services identified most critical and needed in their community. The nine counties who will participate in this initiative are: Yellowstone, Missoula, Gallatin, Sanders, Ravalli, Silver Bow, Flathead, Lake, and Lewis and Clark. Collectively, these counties represent 62% of Montana's overall population and are home to an estimated 178,000 adults in the target population. As of April 8,2020, 78% of the COVID-19 cases in Montana were in one of these 9 counties.
Our second strategy involves funding four tribally operated state approved substance abuse treatment facilities, located in four American Indian Reservations. White Sky Hope on the Rocky Boy Reservation, Spotted Bull on the Fort Peck Reservation, Fort Belknap Chemical Dependency Program on the Fort Belknap Reservation, and Crystal Creek on the Blackfeet Reservation. American Indians compromise the largest racial minority in Montana with 6.4% of residents identifying as American Indian / Alaska Native. American Indians in Montana are disproportionately impacted by behavioral health issues including substance misuse and abuse.
The goal of this project is to increase Montana's capacity to provide behavioral health crisis services, including telehealth services, along with assessment, treatment and recovery support services to individuals impacted by COVID-19 pandemic. Our measurable objectives include documenting behavioral health crisis service provision to at least 1,000 individuals in Montana supported by this funding over the course of the project period and document behavioral health assessment, treatment and recovery service provision supported by the funding to at least 400 individuals over the course of this project period. We anticipate at least 1000 individuals will be served in the first year of the project and 1,400 will be served over the course of the project period.
