World Mental Health Day (WMHD), observed each year on October 10th, aims to “promote the advancement of mental health awareness, prevention of mental disorders, advocacy, and best practice recovery focused interventions worldwide.” ¹

The theme for this year’s WMHD is “Mental Health is a Universal Human Right.” In observance, we are pleased to share exemplars of the important work taking place in our department to advance access to care, advocate for policy changes, and share interventions across the world and across our local communities.

We asked several of our faculty involved in related work what this year’s WMHD theme means to them. Read what they have to say and learn more about their work below.

Dr. Adelsheim is the Director of the Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing (CYMHWB) at Stanford. The Center's work is focused collaborating with youth, their families, and communities to accelerate the creation, implementation, and evaluation of innovative, culturally-responsive mental health and wellbeing programs, with an emphasis on increasing equity, expanding access to care, and centering youth voice. Below are some examples of the numerous projects and programs that Dr. Adelsheim and colleagues in the CYMHW are involved in:

allcove

allcove centers are designed with, by, and for youth. They are places for youth to access a range of emotional, physical, and social support services — on their own terms. Their approach is anchored in a model that focuses on meeting the evolving and unique needs of young people and those who support them. Each center uses this integrated approach and reflects the specific needs of local youth and community. allcove centers are now open in Beach Cities and Palo Alto, with several more in various stages of development, including centers in Sacramento, San Mateo, and South Orange County.  Learn more.

allcove’s Anti-Racist, Culturally-Minded Community Education, Support, and Services (ACCESS) Project

ACCESS was co-created and co-developed by allcove youth, who worked together alongside allcove staff and community partners to gather valuable feedback from young people and their families to guide the development of anti-racist policies and practices for allcove centers and youth-serving organizations.

Tribal Projects to Increase Native American Youth Mental Health Support

These projects and collaborations are focused on supporting  the expansion and improvement of mental health and wellbeing for Native American youth. In collaboration with Native and Tribal programs as well as other local, statewide, and federal agencies, they provide specialized training, consultation, and clinical services that reach across California and nationally.  Learn more.

Dr. Awaad is the Director of the Muslim Mental Health & Islamic Psychology Lab (MMHIP) at Stanford. The MMHIP Lab conducts research focused on understanding Muslims’ unique needs pertaining to mental health and the Islamic faith. Dr. Awaad and colleagues in the lab also work to reduce the stigma surrounding seeking mental health services in Muslim communities. They are committed to providing resources to increase the quality and accessibility of mental health services for Muslims in the United States and worldwide. A few examples of this work include:

Evaluating a culturally responsive psychosocial support program for Afghan refugee young adults resettled in Southern California

This project is a new seed grant funded by the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health in which the study team will collaborate with a resettlement agency in Anaheim, California, to implement a culturally responsive psychosocial support program addressing symptoms of depression among recently resettled young adult Afghan refugees. Read more

Training Imams and Muslim community leaders in suicide response

With the support of Stanford Impact Labs, Dr. Awaad refined and scaled a 100-page Muslim suicide response manual and its accompanying 8-hour training for imams. The lab's community collaborator, Maristan, offered the training to 487 imams by the end of 2022. Because of the success of the training, the curriculum is being modified and offered to youth leaders, community leaders, Sunday school teachers, and others in leadership positions, with hopes to train at least one or two people from 80% of the 3000 mosques in the U.S. over the next five years. Read more

Supporting the community at Stanford University

Work with teams across the campus has resulted in important new therapy and consultation services and community programs after the earthquake in Turkey and Syria and expanding access to mental health services for Muslim students.

Dr. Hardy is the Director of INSPIRE training which aims to increase access to international expertise in psychosocial interventions for complex mental health problems through workshops and training opportunities. In addition, Dr. Hardy has led multiple trainings and workshops in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis (CBTp)  to a wide variety of audiences including community clinicians, psychiatrists, and families, and provides ongoing supervision and consultation in this approach. Dr. Hardy is also involved in the implementation of national strategies to increase dissemination of early psychosis models with the aim of bringing these cutting edge treatments to a broader population.

Vice President for North America IEPA  Intervening Early in Mental Health

IEPA focuses on raising awareness for early intervention across the spectrum of mental health presentations taking a trans-diagnostic approach. The global reach of this organization and partnerships with other international organizations leverages resources, knowledge, and expertise to address the issue of early intervention across diverse settings. This year, during the annual meeting, the conference organizers and IEPA committee presented a ‘Call to Action on Climate Change: a threat for mental health around the world’ petition to the President of the World Health Organization, signed by members of IEPA. The petition underscored the harmful effects of climate change on mental health and advocated for mental health as an important target for early intervention, recognizing that specific populations (such as youth and young adults and individuals from low and middle income countries) are disproportionately impacted by climate change and that this needs to be addressed in a proactive manner. Learn more.

Dr. Humphreys is the Chair of the Stanford-Lancet Commission on the North American Opioid Crisis. He researches individual and societal level interventions for addictive and psychiatric disorders, focusing particularly on evaluating the outcomes of professionally administered treatments and peer-operated self-help groups, and, analyzing the impact of public policies touching addiction, mental health, public health, and public safety.

The Stanford-Lancet Commission on the North American Opioid Crisis

The Stanford-Lancet Commission on the North American Opioid Crisis was formed in response to the soaring opioid-related morbidity and mortality that the United States and Canada have experienced over the past 25 years. The Commission is supported by Stanford University and brings together diverse Stanford scholars and other leading experts around the U.S. and Canada with the goal of understanding the opioid crisis and proposing solutions to it domestically while attempting to stop its spread internationally. Learn more.

Dr. Joshi is a Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Education, Senior Associate Vice Provost for Academic Wellbeing in the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE) at Stanford University, and Director of School Mental Health Services at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford. Dr. Joshi’s scholarly work focuses on school mental health, suicide prevention in school settings, cultural aspects of pediatric health, doctor-parent-teacher collaboration in medical care, and wellbeing promotion in youth and young adults.  

Examples of recent projects and programs include:

• Means Restriction Advisory Group, Project Safety Net Palo Alto
• Student Mental Health Policy Workgroup, California Dept. of Education 
• Suicide Prevention Oversight Committee, Santa Clara County 
• HEARD Alliance (Healthcare Alliance in Response to Adolescent Depression and related conditions)
• Recent book project:
  Thinking about Prescribing: The Psychology of Psychopharmacology with Diverse Youth and Families
  Our remedies are only as good as the way in which we dispense them. That's the central premise of Thinking About Prescribing, a new volume that encourages pharmacotherapists to view the prescribing of a psychiatric medication to young patients not simply as part of a clinical visit, but rather as the beginning of an ongoing alliance with youth and their parents or legal guardians. The book makes the case for a partnership that doesn't lean on psychiatric jargon or an encyclopedic list of side effects, but instead on measured candor, vulnerability, and—most importantly—time.

Dr. Khan is co-Chief of the Diversity and Cultural Mental Health Section in our department. She has been working with WellConnect since 2014, addressing burnout, trauma, and secondary trauma in Stanford physicians and physicians in training. She founded and directs THRIVE, the mental health component of Stanford’s LGBTQ+ Health Program. Dr. Khan is also a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Innovation in Global Health (CIGH) and serves on the CIGH Program Leadership Committee.

Building Mental Health Services Infrastructure in rural Guatemala

Dr. Khan has been working to address mental health in underserved populations since her time as a doctoral student in community health. Over the last few years, she has helped implement a mental health training curriculum in rural Guatemala so that local physicians can provide basic mental health services. Read more about the project here and hear what Dr. Khan has to say in this recent Heartbeat and Hiccups story.

Dr. Matlow's clinical and research efforts focus on understanding and addressing the impact of stress, adversity, and trauma in children, families, and communities. In particular, Dr. Matlow seeks to apply current scientific knowledge of the neurobiological and developmental impact of stress, trauma, and adversity in shaping interventions and systems of care. He is engaged in clinical service, program development, and interdisciplinary collaboration efforts that address childhood trauma exposure in communities that have been historically marginalized, under-resourced, and/or experienced human rights violations. He has worked extensively in providing trauma-focused psychological evaluation, treatment, and advocacy services with immigrant youth and families, with a focus on immigrants from Latin American countries. Examples of current and recent projects and programs include:

El Encuentro: Building Systems to Support Immigrant Families

Unprecedented numbers of unaccompanied immigrant children and newcomer children in families are arriving in the U.S. seeking safety and protection after fleeing communities where extreme poverty, violence, and social conditions make it impossible to thrive and grow. Systemic barriers to resources leave many children “falling through the cracks,” encountering bias and discrimination, and experiencing an exacerbation of accumulating traumatic stress. To address these problems, with support from Stanford Impact Labs, a team of collaborators will develop and evaluate model programs that provide integrated, multidisciplinary, trauma-informed services as part of “el encuentro” (“the encounter” or “starting place”) for newcomer children and families. Read more about this project and explore related scholarly publications:

• Strengthening Academic Medicine’s Response to Humanitarian Concerns
• Pediatric Perspectives and Tools for Attorneys Representing Immigrant Children: Conducting Trauma-Informed Interviews of Children from Mexico and Central America
• When Undoing Is Not Enough — Repairing Harms Inflicted on Immigrant Children
   

Guide for mental health professionals serving unaccompanied children

A new resource guide was recently released that contextualizes the experiences of unaccompanied children released from government custody and provides guidance for mental health professionals on how best to meet their therapeutic needs. This guide, titled “Guidance for Mental Health Professionals Serving Unaccompanied Children Released from Government Custody,” was made possible by a collaboration between the Stanford Early Life Stress and Resilience Program, the National Center for Youth Law, and the Center for Trauma Recovery & Juvenile Justice. The team utilized their previous collaborations where they interviewed children in government custody and detention as the foundation for the resource guide.  Read more.

Dr. Reicherter is the Director of the Human Rights in Trauma Mental Health Laboratory at Stanford. He has expertise in the area of cross-cultural trauma psychiatry, having spent more than a decade devoted to providing a combination of administrative and clinical services in trauma mental health locally and internationally. He is on the List of Experts for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and for the United Nations’ International Criminal Court. He is on the Fulbright Specialists Roster for his work in international trauma mental health. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University. 

Examples of recent projects and programs include:

Trauma-Informed Investigations Field Guide

The guide documents the trauma-informed approach adopted by the Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da'esh/ISIL (UNITAD) in an effort to share leading, actionable practice for domestic and international investigators with respect to their engagement with vulnerable survivors and witnesses in a manner sensitive to the trauma they may have suffered. In addition to mainstreaming a psycho-social approach in the collection of testimonial evidence, the UNITAD Witness Protection and Support Unit has developed guidance documents and in-house training to enhance the ability of investigators to engage with vulnerable witnesses in a manner aligned with best practice. Read more about the field guide here and learn more about the background here.

A trauma-informed approach to United Nations’ war crimes investigations

This project is a new seed grant, funded by the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, that will support efforts to assess the efficacy of a trauma-informed training and mentorship partnership with specific United Nations Investigative mechanisms. Read more about the project here and in this related piece.

Our psychiatry program has been a huge supporter of global mental health initiatives and, with the tremendous support of Stanford's Center for Innovation in Global Health, the program has been able to send many residents abroad over the past several years. 

Dr. Sallie DeGolia, Training Director, has recently received CIGH funding to conduct global mental health site development this December at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda. With this new collaboration, the residency program hopes to send trainees with strong global health career interests to Rwanda.  Learn more