A summary of REACH mental health training

Credit: The REACH Institute

The REACH Institute (Resource for Advancing Children’s Mental Health) is a national nonprofit organization devoted to ensuring that the most effective, scientifically proven mental health care reaches all children and families, especially those who have the least access to care because of economic, geographic, and/or systematic disadvantages.

REACH brings proven scientific knowledge and evidence-based practices directly to the health care providers who can use it to change lives by providing intensive, interactive, and sustained training to mental health clinicians, parent advocates, school-based providers, and primary care providers (PCPs). This approach serves to both reduce the time it takes for scientific breakthroughs to make it into clinical practice and to increase the number of health professionals equipped with the skills and confidence to deliver effective mental health care.

Our flagship program, Patient-Centered Mental Health in Pediatric Primary Care (PPP), equips pediatric primary care providers with the latest evidence-based practices and therapies to diagnose and treat mental health disorders. Led by national leaders in child psychiatry and pediatrics, the course teaches PCPs how to use evidence-based practices to assess, manage, and treat common mental health issues in children.

Course participants learn to correctly identify and differentiate among pediatric behavioral health problems such as depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder, anxiety states (including PTSD), oppositional and conduct disorders, and psychosis. They also learn to effectively manage psychopharmacology, with instruction on how to select medications, initiate and taper dosages, monitor improvements, and identify and minimize medication side effects. Finally, participants learn how to create and implement a treatment plan by mobilizing existing resources like family members and school personnel.

While other continuing education programs provide short, one-off lectures that have proven to have little effect, our curriculum is built on the science of behavior change and includes ongoing coaching for up to four months. Through this intensive approach, REACH transforms the practices of providers, enabling them to address most mental health cases at the point-of-interaction (thus, reducing backlog and providing care to otherwise unserved patients).

REACH also offers a Child/Adolescent Training in Evidence-Based Psychotherapies (CATIE) for Primary Care series that includes:

CBT for Depression in Pediatric Primary Care equips pediatric primary care providers—including pediatricians, family physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants—with practical skills to address mental health challenges in children and teens. The course teaches PCPs how to help depressed youth use proven CBT skills to alleviate their symptoms as they await therapy from a mental health professional.

CBT for Depression in Pediatric Primary Care is a full-day, hands-on workshop that focuses on building practical knowledge, skills, and confidence in using CBT techniques to manage youth depression. In addition to CBT techniques, participants will learn to identify the core components of youth depression, screen and assess for depression and suicidality in a primary care setting, and recognize when to refer patients to a mental health specialist. The experienced faculty team includes one mental health professional and one pediatric primary care provider. More about the course’s Continuing Medical Education accreditation is available here.

Similar to other courses in REACH’s gold standard training series, the CBT for Depression in Pediatric Primary Care course also includes four follow-up group learning and coaching sessions, designed to help participants implement the principles covered in the workshop. Each one-hour session provides opportunities for guided discussion and problem-solving with The REACH Institute’s faculty and peers.

In addition to CBT for Depression in Pediatric Primary Care, REACH’s training series of one-day courses includes:

CBT for Anxiety in Pediatric Primary Care

Practical Behavior Management in Pediatric Primary Care

Addressing Trauma in Pediatric Primary Care

REACH’s gold standard training was developed with renowned experts in the field of youth mental health, grounded in the science of behavior change, and based on proven instructional approaches of how adults learn best. Every program is rigorously evaluated on an ongoing basis to ensure it teaches the most effective therapies using the most effective learning models. Participants consistently score REACH training programs in the top 10% of continuing education courses, citing presentation quality, content, and relevance to their practice. Since 2006, we’ve trained over 8,000 PCPs on mental health. Our goal of training 16,000 primary care providers who support 5 million children by 2027. For more information, visit https://thereachinstitute.org.