This quarter, as we announce and roll out the new A New Lease On Life initiative, we wanted to highlight an existing mental health collaboration between two health safety net sites, Catholic Charities of Eastern Virginia (CCEVA) and Chesapeake Care Free Clinic (CCFC), and the success they've had in improving access to mental health services. 
 
Recognizing the need for mental health services for the uninsured in Chesapeake, and the value of the integrating primary medical and behavioral health services, CCEVA and CCFC agreed to use CCEVA's Access to Therapy (ACT) Program to provide mental health services to CCFC's patients struggling with depression and anxiety.
 
Heather Calvert, a resident counselor for the ACT Program, provides mental health services to the patients at CCFC three days a week, starting patients in individual therapy, then graduating them into group therapy. She collaborates with CCFC's nurse practitioner, Mary Beth Carr, and medical director to assure that these patients have adequate medical follow-up and the medications that will best help them to manage their symptoms. With the support that the ACT Program provides, free clinic patients are better able to manage their anxiety and depression, as well as their chronic medical conditions.
 
This partnership has been particularly helpful, since the local community services board has stopped taking new clients.  CCFC explains that many of their patients would have simply gone without mental health services and medication, and would have most likely experienced more crises, more hospitalizations, and suicides in some instances.  Having the resident counselor from the ACT Program as a point of contact has provided an invaluable service to those clients.  The ACT Program, in this instance, is a great example of how two agencies have collaborated to "fill the gap" and meet a critical need.
 
As a result of this collaboration, Cathy Revell, Executive Director of CCFC, sees a major impact. "What has become clear to us, here at Chesapeake Care, is that treating patients who have anxiety or depression requires not just medication management, but counseling.  It is the counseling that gives them the support they need to make life altering changes in their behavior and attitudes.  It is the counseling that gives them the strength to return to work, or face their problems head on and seek adaptive and appropriate solutions.  We are truly blessed to be able to offer this comprehensive treatment to our patients."