Addressing the Needs of Persons with SMI, SED, and COD Impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic Across a Large, Culturally and Economically Diverse Region of Central-West Texas - Hill Country Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Centers (HCMHDDC) will serve persons with serious mental illness, emotional disturbance, or co-occurring diagnoses impacted by COVID-19 in a 22,593 square mile, economically and culturally diverse region by delivering evidence-based outpatient clinical services tailored to the unique needs of each individual.
HCMHDDC provides a full array of crisis response, intake and assessment, trauma informed, culturally competent and person-centered outpatient services. These include individualized evidenced-based therapies, psychosocial rehabilitation and skills training, tele-psychiatry, medication management, peer led services, family partner, and crisis intervention and follow up.
The target population is persons with SMI, SED, or co-occurring diagnoses. The geographic area is 19 Texas Counties that vary from small urban near Austin to rural and frontier counties on or near the Mexico border and west. Eight counties have majority (>50%) Hispanic or Latino populations, and the poverty level in six is at or above the state average of 17.2%.
Of the population of 756,326, 8.45% (63,880) were diagnosed with COVID-19 and 1,319 (2.1%) died. This resulted in a decline in crisis hotline calls due to fear of the virus, with subsequent increase in psychiatric hospital commitments as mental health severely deteriorated before help was sought. It also led to a marked increase in requests for intakes and outpatient services.
This project will provide the resources to deliver quality outpatient services to an additional 500 persons with SMI, SED, and COD per year. The goals are to 1) implement systems to obtain NOMs information and record, collect, track, and report all measurable data by hiring data entry specialists and building an SQL database to store and retrieve data; 2) improve infrastructure to deliver audio and audio-visual telehealth services by replacing outdated computers with laptops that will provide faster, more reliable and secure connections; 3) expand crisis capacity and ability to provide trauma-informed screening and person-centered services by adding two crisis care coordinators and a licensed clinician for tele-video intake and initial treatment planning; 4) increase outpatient services by adding additional tele-psychiatry services, two licensed clinicians and a program nurse; 5) increase clinical and recovery support services including case management, psychosocial rehabilitation, and peer support by hiring two care coordinators to assist with patient-centered plans, case management, and skills training, and three peers to model and coach recovery practices and conduct peer support groups; and 6) address mental health needs of staff through hiring a wellness coordinator to develop and implement programs to assist all personnel. These services will extend beyond the lifetime of the grant.
