Purpose

The NAMI Iowa Provider Training aims to educate physicians, nurses, medical staff, mental health professionals, direct service workers and other allied professionals on the lived experiences of people living with mental illness navigating care and recovery. This training utilizes evidence-based curriculum and storytelling from a teacher panel consisting of a mental health provider, a family member of someone living with a mental illness, and a person in recovery. The mental health provider is also either a family member of someone with a mental illness or and person in recovery as well. 

Learning Objectives

• Introduce health care providers to the emotional stages people affected by mental illness experience on the way to recovery.
• Gain a fresh understanding of and empathy for their patients’/clients’ lived experience, especially during treatment.
• Promote collaboration between clients, families, and providers to achieve the best level of recovery possible.

Educational Need

Silent epidemics often are insidious, eating away at society from within while the voices of victims go unheard and advocates are muted. Such is the case with mental illness. Because of the associated stigma, those afflicted rarely receive the required resources. Their plight has been particularly precarious in Iowa, which ranks among the worst states in the nation for treatment — 47th in psychiatrists, 44th in mental health workforce availability and 51st (including the District of Columbia) in the ratio of state psychiatric beds to residents. Yet serious mental illness is not an anomaly in Iowa. It afflicts 123,000.

According to the Cedar Valley Mental Health Planning Coalition, it is taking its toll in Black Hawk County:

• One in four — 29,000 adults — will experience a mental health issue.
• One in 17 — 18,000 adults — will develop a serious mental illness.
• One in five — 5,500 children — will experience a diagnosable mental health issue.
• One in 10 — 2,750 children — will have a serious emotional disturbance.

Due to the closure of state mental health hospitals and a shortage of mental health providers in Iowa, especially in rural health and child psychiatry, many individuals experiencing a mental health crisis seek help from the providers they have the most access to – primary care physicians and emergency departments. While these medical professionals are experts in their respective fields – family practice and emergency medical services – many of these providers have not received in-depth mental health training. After all, there is only so much that can be addressed in a short 10-15 minute appointment with a busy physician. As a result, many patients have reported receiving care that has lacked in understanding, breadth and compassion for the mental health crisis and struggles they are experiencing. These patients report that they have struggled to find the necessary services and care they seek, with many patients getting lost in the system.

The NAMI Provider professional development course aims to address these gaps in access and care by educating physicians and allied professionals of the real struggles of individuals and their families seeking mental health treatment utilizing an evidence-based curriculum centered around the recovery model of treatment and storytelling from a panel of NAMI-trained teachers. This teacher panel includes: a mental health provider (who is also a person in recovery from a mental illness or a family member of someone living with mental illness); a family member of someone living with a mental health condition; and a person in recovery from a mental illness. It is NAMI Iowa’s hope that this training leads to better treatment outcomes and patient experiences so that all providers are equipped for working with this population to bridge the gaps in care, education and understanding.