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A Community-Inspired Conversation About Behavioral Health

Published Date
Author Providence Digital Innovation Group

Behavioral health is a difficult component of a patient’s condition to convey, and get suitable care for  – particularly for underserved communities. Per the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), 1 in 5 people will have a behavioral health need in a given year, and those numbers are exacerbated in black and brown communities. COVID-19 has only caused those numbers to increase, causing jarring spikes in deaths by despair, and more patients reporting a lack of access to behavioral health and substance abuse treatment due to a shortage in behavioral health professionals and services.

There’s opportunity for digital technology to open up conversations, and demystify behavioral health for all communities. Effective, trustworthy, and sustainable change requires real conversations with real people to truly understand potential solutions.

We collaborated with Grapevine Health Founder and CEO, Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, to go ‘on the street’ to talk to people about the myriad challenges facing underserved patient populations and use those conversations as fuel for innovation.

In these rich brainmeld collaboration sessions, experts from the Providence Digital Innovation Group, the broader Providence team and Dr. Lisa herself unpack challenges outlined directly from ‘people on-the-street’, and collaborate in real-time around how and where digital can fuel sustainable solutions surrounding behavioral health.

This episode focuses on the challenges surrounding behavioral health. 

Key themes the team covered in this conversation:

  • Changing the ways we talk about mental health with patients, and educating patients to give them the language to articulate how they feel, and to help inspire long-term behavior change.

  • Thinking about how consumer-facing digital tools can improve how they are integrated with mental and physical health together to deliver a more holistic picture of patients’ health.

  • Unsiloing different behavioral health needs from specific services to provide a more holistic spectrum of care.

Solutions ranged from developing digital communities to help patients access more community support, and leveraging influencers via video formats to help normalize conversations about mental health.

Watch the full episode below: