FY 2020 annual report

A Y E A R L I K E N O O T H E R 25 New Jersey Mental Health Institute Provides Crisis Support and Technical Assistance and Training T he New Jersey Mental Health Institute (NJMHI) was established in 2000 to promote quality mental health services through training, technical assistance, research, and policy development. In 2019, NJAMHAA elected new members of the NJMHI Board of Trustees to introduce innovative thinking in exploring new opportunities. In FY2020, NJMHI completed its 15-year Sri Lanka Mental Health Relief Initiative, which began in 2005, soon after the Southeast Asian tsunami hit Sri Lanka. Working in conjunction with the Neurosurgery Development Foundation, a local, non-governmental Sri Lankan charitable organization, a NJMHI team, including an expert trainer with extensive experience in trauma treatment and a cultural ambassador, traveled to Sri Lanka for two weeks to provide trilingual training to more than 100 local counselors, the medical community, teachers, corporate human resource specialists, religious and local community leaders and volunteers in recognizing the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, other mental illnesses and substance use disorders and, when appropriate, referring people to treatment directly. Evaluations were sent out and it was determined that more than 200,000 people had been positively impacted directly or indirectly as a result of the training by the individuals who were trained. In addition, since the team could not return to Sri Lanka to provide additional training due to civil unrest, NJMHI created trilingual educational brochures, which have been shown to be valuable resources. This third and final phase of the Initiative was un- dertaken with the Sri Lanka Centre for Development Facilitation (SLCDF), a nongovernmental organi- zation in Sri Lanka, which engaged Sister Janet Nethisinghe, President of the Sri Lanka EMDR (Eye Movement and Desensitization and Reprocessing) Association, and a group of professionals to de- velop the Program for Community Leaders to En- hance their Capacity as Facilitators on Basic Mental Health Needs/Requirements for communities in remote areas that do not have consistent cohorts of clinicians. This three-part training program provided theoretical knowledge and practical skills in individual counseling. The final phase educated participants on social and health issues, including mental illness, in rural communities in Sri Lan- ka and provided an intro- duction to counseling and awareness of the process of community counseling. The program also aimed to de- velop positive self-concepts and healthy peer relation- ships among attendees and explored the roles and responsibilities of community counselors. According to the SLCDF, 50 families (250 individuals) directly benefited from this Initiative and 1,500 families ben- efited indirectly. NJMHI is currently exploring ideas to build on its reputation for providing culturally and linguistically relevant behavioral health services, and evidence- based practices for clinicians working with veterans and children’s providers. Possible projects include developing medical-legal partnerships and collaborating with a New Jersey medical school to establish a Center of Excellence that would focus on addressing social determinants of health.