Mind Matters: A Behavioral Health Podcast

Adrienne Griffen, MPP and founding Executive Director of Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance, a nonprofit organization focused on national policy around maternal mental health, joins Dr. Mena Mirhom to talk about the leading complication of pregnancy and childbirth: mental health issues. Adrienne shares about her lived experience with postpartum depression and anxiety and has devoted the last decade-plus of her career to establishing peer-led support groups, creating educational programs for mental health providers and maternal-child healthcare professionals, and helping pass legislation requiring information about postpartum depression and anxiety be provided to new mothers. Adrienne and Dr. Mirhom discuss several ways that OBGYNs and primary care providers can better support pregnant and postpartum patients in order to help address the maternal mortality crisis in the U.S. Learn more about MMHLA at mmhla.org. 

Dr. Henry Chung, Senior Medical Director of Behavioral Health Integration Strategy at Montefiore Care Management Organization and Professor of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, joins Dr. Mena Mirhom to discuss how far integrated behavioral health care has come — and how far it still has to go. As a pioneer of collaborative care and a psychiatrist who has followed a somewhat nontraditional career path, Dr. Chung has spent decades advocating for community-based services, early identification and treatment for underserved populations and realistic support for primary care providers. Dr. Chung and Dr. Mirhom talk about the paradigm shift toward a public health approach to behavioral health care, and Dr. Chung shares his ideas for how to make collaborative care easier for medical practices. 

Dr. George Nasra, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center, joins Dr. Mena Mirhom to discuss the siloed nature of the U.S. healthcare system and the opportunity to achieve behavioral health integration by taking a population health perspective. Dr. Nasra also serves as Chief of the Division of Collaborative Care and Wellness and Medical Director of Behavioral Health Partners at URMC. In this capacity, he discusses the history of Rochester’s biopsychosocial approach and philosophy of whole-person care and shares how and why they implemented a collaborative care model. Finally, Dr. Mirhom and Dr. Nasra dig into the details on how CoCM helped Rochester not only to improve the quality of care but also to reduce costs.

Dr. Kyle John, Clinical VP of Behavioral Health at Mercy Health System, joins Dr. Mena Mirhom to talk about the critical problem of access to behavioral healthcare in the United States — and how to solve it.
Dr. John defines collaborative care and discusses its benefits, including how increased access to behavioral healthcare can help improve patients' physical health. Dr. John and Dr. Mirhom discuss collaborative care applications for both pediatric and adult populations and how behavioral health clinicians and primary care providers can, under the collaborative care model, truly work together for improved patient outcomes. Dr. John shares his experience from implementing collaborative care at Mercy Health System and offers his advice to providers and health systems who are looking for the future of behavioral healthcare.