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SAMHSA News Room
Contact Media Services: (240) 276-2130

SAMHSA News Bulletin

Date: 4/22/2010
Media Contact: SAMHSA Press Office
Telephone: 240-276-2130

SAMHSA Joins Together with National Behavioral Health Provider Associations to Promote Mental Health Recovery

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) recently approved awards to five national behavioral healthcare provider associations to hasten awareness, acceptance, and adoption of recovery-based practices in the delivery of mental health services.  The five awards represent a major new outreach by SAMHSA to directly engage key behavioral health professional groups in its on-going efforts to fundamentally improve the provision of behavioral healthcare services.

 

The following national professional organizations will receive funding for the next 5 years to develop recovery-oriented educational materials and train thousands of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurses, social workers, and peer specialists:

 

  • American Psychiatric Association
  • American Psychological Association
  • American Psychiatric Nurses Association
  • Council on Social Work Education
  • National Association of Peer Specialists

The five awards are part of SAMHSA’s new Recovery to Practice project that is in support of the agency’s strategic initiative to enhance the nation’s behavioral health workforce. 

 

“Through this new initiative we are retooling the behavioral health workforce by applying the principles of recovery to direct care practice,” said SAMHSA Administrator Pamela S. Hyde, J.D.  “Critical components of mental health recovery such as peer support and self-empowerment will be expanded in the workforce to help clients build on their own strengths and create positive life changes.”

 

In addition to material development and professional training, the Recovery to Practice effort will establish an on-line recovery resource center for behavioral health professionals that will enable them to access important research and practical information on mental health recovery-based practices and receive publications and participate in periodic web-based training seminars to enhance their clinical practices.

 

The project builds on SAMHSA’s National Consensus Statement on Mental Health Recovery (http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/publications/allpubs/sma05-4129/) that produced a definition and ten fundamental components of mental health recovery as well as the agency’s on-going work in the area of shared decision-making.

 

The Recovery to Practice project has assembled a team of leading behavioral health organizations and curriculum development experts to assist with this effort including the Annapolis Coalition, Mental Health America, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, National Development and Research Institutes, Inc., and the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services

 

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SAMHSA is a public health agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. Its mission is to reduce the impact of substance abuse and mental illness on America’s communities.



Page Last Updated: 4/23/2010