More than 50% of visits we make to family physicians are for health problems with significant social/behavioral components such as anxiety, depression, addictions, obesity, and pain. Incorporating mental and behavioral health approaches in the treatment of primary health problems will result in better treatment success and, ultimately, will reduce utilization of health care services, The rural setting presents unique challenges to providing quality mental health care.
- Mental health providers are in short supply
- Existing mental health clinics are located a considerable distance from residents
- Seeking care from a mental health provider may carry a greater stigma, and
- Financial barriers exist due to inadequacies in health insurance coverage and large numbers of rural residents with incomes below the poverty level.
Rather than simply creating an "urban" care system in rural Minnesota, solutions will lie in fashioning a system of mental heath care that fits the rural setting culturally, financially, and geographically. One of the challenges for the CRMHS is to determine what that system would be and then help to develop it.
"Our vision of the CRMHS is to create the knowledge that will allow the development of solutions and the creation of new treatment strategies for rural communities, " explains Gary Davis, Ph.D., Senior Associate Dean University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth.
We anticipate exciting discoveries over the next few years in the CRMHS.
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