Name
Strengthening integrated care team response to behavioral health distress: Skills, relationships, and structures
Description

Integrated primary care teams frequently encounter patients experiencing behavioral health distress, yet many frontline staff—such as medical assistants, access associates, and security—receive little formal training in how to respond. At Highland Family Medicine, qualitative feedback from staff identified fear, uncertainty, and lack of clarity as barriers to peer intervention and coordinated team responses to challenging patient encounters. This workshop describes a practice-based initiative that integrates Mental Health First Aid training with broader efforts to strengthen team skills, relationships, and practice structures supporting biopsychosocial care. Presenters will share lessons learned from implementing this interprofessional training model and preliminary evaluation data, including staff confidence and real-world application of MHFA skills. Participants will explore strategies for building frontline capacity and fostering team-based responses to behavioral health distress in primary care settings.

Speakers
Traci Terrance, PhD, LCSW
Co-Authors
Elizabeth H. Naumburg, MD
Content Level
Intermediate
Tags
Team-based care, Training/Supervision, Workforce development
Session Type
Concurrent
Objective 1
Describe common barriers frontline healthcare staff experience when responding to patients with behavioral health distress in integrated primary care settings.
Objective 2
Identify key components of implementing behavioral health-oriented training across interdisciplinary primary care teams to strengthen behavioral health response capacity.
Objective 3
Apply a ‘skills–relationships–structures’ framework to identify gaps and develop strategies for improving coordinated team responses to behavioral health distress within their own practice settings.
Content Reference 1

Shiri, R., El-Metwally, A., Sallinen, M., Pöyry, M., Härmä, M., & Toppinen-Tanner, S. (2023). The role of continuing professional training or development in maintaining current employment: A systematic review. Healthcare, 11(21), 2900. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11212900

Content Reference 2

Reist C., Petiwala I., Latimer J., Raffaelli S.B., Chiang M., Eisenberg D., & Campbell S. (2022) Collaborative mental health care: A narrative review. Medicine. Dec 30;101(52):e32554. doi: 10.1097/MD.0000000000032554. PMID: 36595989; PMCID: PMC9803502.

Content Reference 3

Mental Health Association in New York State. (n.d.). Mental health first aid. https://mhanys.org/mhfa/

Content Reference 4

Parker, C. B., Calhoun, A., Wong, A. H., Davidson, L., & Dike, C. (2019). A call for behavioral emergency response teams in inpatient hospital settings. AMA Journal of Ethics, 21(10), E905–E912. https://doi.org/10.1001/amajethics.2019.905

Content Reference 5

Lockhart, L. (2020). Behavioral health response teams. Nursing Made Incredibly Easy! 18(6):p 56, November/December 2020. | DOI: 10.1097/01.NME.0000717668.82980.0a