Literature Collection

At a time of ever increasing mental health problems in Australian society, the nursing profession is beset by problems of an insufficient workforce specialising in this area. Not only is there a shortage of suitable trained specialist mental health nurses, but undergraduate nursing programs inadequately prepare students for practical mental health nursing. Fewer students are enrolling in mental health nursing, and many nurses are leaving the workforce. A particular problem in rural Australia is that there is a lack of specialist mental health services, and nurses are being increasingly relied upon to perform the role of mental health nurse despite lacking the necessary qualifications and experience.This paper aims to describe the development, implementation and evaluation of a mental health continuing education program for nurses employed in rural and remote areas of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. This was a collaborative educational initiative mounted by the NSW Health Department (who funded the project), a rural university and a number of regional health service partners. The paper includes information on how this program was conceived, developed and conducted through distance education mode. It also evaluates the efficacy of this program as perceived by 202 out of 303 participants. Overall the project was rated very favourably, and represents a cost-effective, convenient method of enabling rural and regional nurses to update and improve their skills in mental health nursing.

OBJECTIVE: General medical conditions among patients with mental and substance use disorders are often not adequately detected and managed in behavioral health settings. The project described in this study sought to investigate how behavioral health clinics used a new general health integration (GHI) framework to assess integration efforts. METHODS: Eleven community behavioral health clinics were introduced to a new continuum-based framework for use in GHI assessment. A multidisciplinary team in each clinic was tasked with identifying current GHI interventions according to several framework stages (preliminary, intermediate 1, intermediate 2, and advanced) among eight domains and 15 related subdomains. The clinics provided feedback on the framework's utility for GHI planning and advancement. RESULTS: The clinics could readily identify distinct integration interventions within each domain and subdomain. Clinics reported strengths in the domains of trauma-informed care, self-management support, social service linkages, and quality improvement. Opportunities for future advancement in integration of general health services were identified in the major domains of screening and referral, evidence-based treatments, care teams, and sustainability. The clinics also described potential benefits of the framework to further advance and implement GHI best practices. CONCLUSIONS: The clinics could use the framework as a practice assessment of integration efforts with minimal guidance and identify several evidence-based integration interventions. Some GHI interventions were seen as strengths and as opportunities for further advancement. Longitudinal evaluation among a larger number of and more geographically diverse behavioral health clinics seeking to advance their GHI practices will improve the GHI framework's generalizability and potential for dissemination.

To address the high demand for youth anxiety treatment, researchers have begun to evaluate stepped care approaches to use limited resources efficiently. Quantifying cost savings can inform policy decisions about optimal ways to use limited resources. This study presents a cost analysis of a stepped care treatment approach for anxiety disorders in youth. Youths (N = 112) completed an 8-session computer-administered attention bias modification treatment (Step 1), and families were given the option to "step up" to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT; Step 2). Stepped care treatment cost estimates were based on (a) resources used in treatment (i.e., clinician/paraprofessional time, equipment/materials) and (b) Medicaid reimbursement rates for clinician and paraprofessional time. We compared these two cost estimates with a hypothetical standard treatment approach for youth anxiety disorders: CBT only. We also tested predictive models to determine whether they could guide decisions about which youths, based on baseline characteristics, should be assigned to stepped care or directly to CBT only to avoid the costs associated with Step 1. Compared to a hypothetical standard CBT approach, the stepped care treatment was associated with an overall cost savings of 44.4% for the Medicaid reimbursement model and 47.7% for the resource cost model. The predictive models indicated that assigning all youths to stepped care would be more cost-effective than assigning certain youths directly to CBT only. This study provides the first evidence that a stepped care treatment approach for youth anxiety is associated with substantial cost savings compared with a standard CBT.