Partnership To Train Mental Health Providers For Eastern Montana

Mental Health Help

A new collaboration between Montana State University’s College of Nursing, the Montana Office of Rural Health and Area Education Center, MSU Billings and Billings Clinic aims to help address a shortage of mental health providers in eastern Montana.

The partnership, known as Montana Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training – Eastern and North Central Montana, or BHWET-East, will provide training opportunities and financial support for students working to become psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners, mental health counselors or psychiatrists. The work is supported by a fouryear, $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.

The partnership’s goal is to increase access to high-quality and culturally appropriate behavioral health services in 38 of Montana’s counties in eastern and north-central Montana. That access is desperately needed, according to Stacy Stellflug, the grant’s principal investigator and project director and an assistant professor at the MSU College of Nursing’s Billings campus location.

“Like many places in the country, counties in rural Montana struggle to respond effectively to individuals in acute behavioral health crisis,” Stellflug said. “In a frontier region, like eastern Montana, where there is a low population and high geographic remoteness, an individual experiencing a behavioral health crisis may be hundreds of miles from a hospital, and the nearest hospital may not have licensed behavioral health staff available to properly assess the patient and determine how to respond.”

Montana is at the epicenter of the country’s mental health crisis, Stellflug said, which makes the need for mental health care even greater. For more than 30 years, Montana has ranked in the top five states for the highest suicide rates for all age groups, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Stellflug also pointed to a recent Montana Healthcare Foundation report that identifies significant behavioral health concerns for Montana citizens. The report found that one in five Montana adults reports having a depressive disorder, 20.8 percent report binge drinking - compared to 16.8 percent nationally - and 7.7 percent are classified as “heavy drinkers,” which is compared to 6.2 percent nationally. Montana youth also report depression, alcohol use, binge drinking and illicit drug use. Montana also has the second highest rate of alcohol-related deaths in the U.S., according to a National Vital Statistics Report.

MT BHWET-East will be led by a team within MSU’s College of Nursing and the Montana Office of Rural Health and Area Health Education Center. It will focus on increasing access to mental health services in some of Montana’s most rural and isolated communities. In addition to supporting future mental health providers, the program aims to expand and enhance community partnerships to increase the number of training sites that integrate mental health care. It will also work to support providers’ awareness of culturally appropriate care, awareness of population needs and more.

“Montana continues to face a behavioral health care workforce shortage, especially in our rural and frontier regions,” said Kailyn Mock, director of the Montana Office of Rural Health and Area Health Education Center at MSU. “Supporting behavioral health professional trainees through their academic careers, providing comprehensive integrated behavioral health education, and creating team-based training opportunities in our communities is a successful model for growing Montana’s health care workforce.”

Stellflug said the grant will enable real results. “It’s a game changer to get this grant and be able to support the future providers who will care for individuals who are hurting and help those individuals learn to cope and process through trauma and grief,” Stellflug said. “I’m eager to foster these partnerships and to support our ability to work together as professionals to meet those needs.”

In the first year of the grant, 16 mental health counseling students and two psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner students will be supported. In each of the second, third and fourth years of the grant, 11 counseling students, three nurse practitioner students and three psychiatric medical residents will be supported.

The psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner students will be enrolled in the Doctor of Nursing Practice program in MSU’s College of Nursing. Mental health counseling students will be enrolled in a master’s program in rehabilitation and mental health counseling offered by MSU Billings. Psychiatric medical residents will be part of the Montana Track at Billings Clinic offered through the University of Washington’s psychiatric medical residency training program.

Sarah Shannon, dean of the MSU College of Nursing, said the grant will create the foundation for interprofessional education, which prepares health professional students for interprofessional collaborative practice, the gold standard.

“Montanans need more access to high-quality mental health services,” Shannon said. “This federal funding will help to create the next generation of mental health care providers who have been educated as an interdisciplinary team to provide care as a high-functioning team. The MSU College of Nursing is enthusiastic about this first-ever partnership with our sister university, MSU Billings, and our clinical partner, Billings Clinic.”

Stefani Hicswa, chancellor of MSU Billings, said MSU Billings is glad to be part of the partnership.

“This grant is really important to Montana, especially the eastern part of the state where access to basic health care, let alone mental health care, is not always easily accessible,” Hicswa said. “Mental health care is at the forefront of our minds now more than ever due to the rising need for care, and we are very happy to partner with MSU, Montana Office of Rural Health and AHEC, and Billings Clinic to help grow our workforce of mental health professionals.”

Dr. John Powers, Billings program director of the University of Washington Psychiatry Residency Training Program Montana Track at Billings Clinic and a Billings Clinic psychiatrist, noted that “the entire country, and especially our region, has a shortage of trained mental health professionals.

“Training more mental health care workers means communities will have better and better access to psychiatric care,” Powers said. “This will increase the number of well-trained mental health professionals across our region, and expand access, which will provide the communities we serve with sorely needed mental health services.”

Stellflug hopes that over time, the BHWET-East program will help improve access to mental health services across rural areas in eastern and north central Montana.

“We’re really glad to be able to work to increase access to mental health services in the area and help people have better tools to cope,” Stellflug said. “If there is one thing COVID has taught us, it is how essential mental health really is.

“We’ve become acutely aware that we have to take care of our bodies and our minds and hearts,” Stellflug added. “We’re excited about this grant and its potential to help us care for the hearts and minds of eastern Montanans.”