Matt Bane Shares Lived Experience in NAMI Keynote Session
Matt Bane was recently invited to speak at the 21st Annual NAMI Indiana Mental Health and Criminal Justice Summit on his personal recovery journey and the importance of peer support roles.
Mission Moment: School Based Interventions Lead to a Major Comeback
When a high school student was experiencing anxiety, depression, and trauma symptoms in January of 2023, Adult & Child’s School Based Services and Lola Mahner, LSW, were there to provide support. Lola quickly learned that despite the past trauma, current trauma was still ongoing. This client and their family were facing possible homelessness, along with a lack of access to healthcare and food. Considering all of these experiences, Lola’s first goal was to help the client regain a baseline and control over their emotions. This involved psychoeducation, providing their family with weekly case management and family sessions (which led to stable housing, healthcare, and food access), targeting peer and social functioning, and utilizing components of CBT and DBT to target thought monitoring and emotional control. This required the client to test their limits, to learn new coping skills and communication strategies, and to develop a different outlook on life. “This was no easy task and resulted in the client leaving the office due to intense emotions more than once, and them wanting to quit therapy on several occasions,” explained Lola. “I never gave up on them. Eventually, I was able to help the client learn that it is okay to have bad days, but these bad days did not define them. Through our therapeutic relationship, they learned how to cope, to communicate, to have more control over their thoughts and emotions, and this hard work paid off.” This client was nominated by their school for the “Comeback Kid” Award, given each year to a student who faced adversities and hardships that impacted their school functioning and abilities, and who demonstrated resilience in overcoming these obstacles by remaining successful in their academic career. Lola had the honor of being one of three individuals present at the award ceremony to support her client. “The smile on their face when they saw me there to support them is something I will never forget. When they gave their acceptance speech after receiving their award, my client introduced me proudly and stated, ‘My therapist is here for me today, and I just want to thank her for all the things she has helped me with over the past year. There were a lot of things I didn’t think I would make it through, and I did it with her help.’ This recognition is rarely something that mental health providers receive, and it will be a moment that I will remember forever,” said Lola. “This moment encompassed all the hard work that we did together. The validation and recognition that my client and I felt that day reminded me of my purpose in this job and was certainly a mission moment for both of us.”
Mission Moment: Reducing Anxiety to Help a Student Stay in the Classroom
Late in September of 2023, Dorian Villanueva, Skills Development Specialist, received a referral for a student experiencing severe separation anxiety that was impacting their ability to come to school and allow their parents to leave. The student eventually stopped attending school altogether. During this student’s intake, Dorian involved the student in coming up with a plan to attend school and spend a couple of hours with her for skills sessions. After a challenging first session, they worked out a schedule that utilized classroom visits where the student’s parents remained in the A&C office and Dorian attended class with the student. Over time, they were able to increase the student’s classroom time and school time, while decreasing Dorian’s classroom and session time and the parents’ presence in the building. “There really wasn’t anything we didn’t try with this student and their family,” Dorian said. She and the student worked together to build up coping skills and implement them into a morning routine to reduce anxiety before school. They modeled a classroom environment and completed activities to improve self-awareness, self-esteem, positive thinking, identifying triggers, self-calming ability, and problem-solving. Dorian was also able to coach the student’s parents on positive and negative reinforcement, extinguishing behaviors, psychoeducation on anxiety, and possible reasons for the student’s increase in anxiety. As of late January 2024, the student had been attending full school days without reporting any separation anxiety and even asked to go to bed earlier so school could come sooner. “This is really a testament to how much students across all backgrounds might benefit from our service,” said Dorian of the student’s success.
Adult & Child Health CEO Allen Brown Announces Retirement
Indianapolis, IN – After nine years working devotedly as the President and CEO for Indiana integrated healthcare provider Adult & Child Health (A&C), Allen Brown is set to retire at the end of March 2024. During his tenure as CEO, Brown has led A&C through many projects and positive changes that will continue to have a profound impact on the Indianapolis community and the organization’s 600 employees. Brown joined A&C in December 2014 with a vision to be the state’s leading provider of whole-person healthcare and played a crucial role in the organization’s growth as a prominent safety net organization in central Indiana. A&C started providing primary care services in 2016, earned FQHC look-alike designation in 2017, and currently operates four integrated healthcare clinics in the south Indianapolis area. A&C services have also expanded in the areas of mental health counseling, addictions treatment, and housing resources for persons experiencing homelessness. Under Brown’s leadership the organization has nearly doubled its annual revenue and has tripled the number of people served each year. Brown also championed A&C’s early adoption of the Certified Community Behavioral Health Center (CCBHC) model, which is designed to increase access to care and crisis services for the community’s most vulnerable residents. A&C has been at the forefront of this movement in the state of Indiana and was recently selected as one of eight Indiana community mental health centers to serve as a proposed pilot site in the Division of Mental Health and Addictions (DMHA) application for a federal CCBHC Demonstration Project. Additionally, A&C plans to open a Behavioral Health Crisis Center at the organization’s south Indianapolis clinic in late March of 2024. Under the CCBHC model of care, crisis centers located within the community play a prominent role in assuring individuals have timely access to services when urgent needs arise, helping to decrease unnecessary emergency room visits and jail incarcerations. “Allen is a skilled team builder and has had a knack for finding ways to help our organization achieve its goals,” said A&C Board President Tom Gaunt. “He has led our organization into a new era with a masterful vision for how we can be more effective moving forward, which is a win-win for Adult and Child and the people we serve. He will be dearly missed.” While a CEO successor has not yet been named, A&C has forged a partnership with Missouri-based Brightli, Inc. – the nation’s fourth-largest nonprofit behavioral health organization by total revenue. The partnership will significantly increase financial and system support resources available to Adult & Child Health, for the benefit of underserved persons with behavioral health and primary care needs. The partnership has been approved by each company’s board and is anticipated to be finalized in coming weeks pending regulatory approval. A public signing and press conference will be announced upon partnership closing, which is expected in Spring 2024. “I am going to miss Adult and Child Health and I’m deeply grateful for the support, trust, and collaboration I’ve received. It has been an honor to serve as CEO and I know even greater things lie ahead for this remarkable organization,” said Mr. Brown.
