Landmark’s ‘Change Direction’ initiative aims to help

Doctor: The best way to help someone who may be struggling is by addressing, not ignoring, the subject of mental health

WOONSOCKET — For Dr. Barbara Van Dahlen, a clinical psychologist in Washington, D.C., the watershed moment came as her 9-year-old daughter spotted a homeless veteran along the roadside while they were out driving.

“She saw this veteran and said ‘how can we let this happen,’” Van Dahlen recalled Friday while participating in Landmark Medical Center’s Campaign to Change Direction initiative. Van Dahlen was a guest speaker with Kevin Hines, the survivor of a suicide attempt, and Rebecca Boss, director of the Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals for Change Direction’s Rhode Island debut at the Prime Healthcare operated Landmark.

The result of Van Dahlen’s family drive was her founding of “Give an Hour,” a nationally-recognized mental health advocacy group seeking to raise awareness of mental health needs.

Since that time, Give an Hour has orchestrated over 240,000 hours of free health care from 7,000 volunteer clinicians providing help to members of the military, veterans and others dealing with

mental health concerns such as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD).

While her organization did what it could to help those who had served their country, a new need surfaced in 2012, with the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, she noted.

That and subsequent events like it, prompted Van Dahlen to ask “what are we missing.”

The answer wasn’t more programs, since those were already in place, but instead a new way of looking at mental illness to help lessen its impacts.

“What is the real challenge,” she asked the gather- ing. “The real challenge is changing our culture. We don’t talk about mental health like we do about our physical health,’’ she said.

People may be feeling something on an emotional level but people are also very good at hiding their emotions at the same time, she offered.

So rather than turn away from a suspected concern about another person’s mental wellbeing, Van Dahlen said a better way to act might be to raise the question to the person directly.

“If we see the signs and we if we did ask them, we actually may be able to get them the help that they need,” she said.

Coping with mental health issues is not a rare experience but in fact a common one, Van Dahlen said. Dahlen offered her own personal experiences with such issues as an example and related her father’s attempts to help her mother with mental health problems over a period of eight years while she was growing up. Eventually, her father could do no more and there was a period of 43 years of her life when Van Dahlen had no contact with her mother.

“We all have history, we all have parts of our lives that we try to shove under the rug,” she said.

But it may be better for people be more open about such issues, about the need to go for treatment and to address those problems openly, according to Van Dahlen.

“How do we change the culture, how do we change the climate,” she asked.

The Change Direction campaign is an attempt to do just that and the first step is a bid to erase the negative views of addressing mental health concerns and create awareness for maintaining good mental health just like maintaining good physical health, she explained.

“This work is public health and it is about everybody and for everybody,” she said of Change Direction.

The program creates a common language, a list of questions to flag mental health issues, and also terminology for promoting and building emotional well being.

“Take care of you, check in with others, engage friends and family, relax and reduce stress,” are all keys to devel- oping healthy habits supporting a person’s emotional wellbeing, according to Van Dahlen.

Those combined with the organization’s five signs of mental health problems, can create a more active approach to maintaining emotional health and heading off problems before they evolve into life-threatening actions.

“What do you do if you see these five signs,” Van Dahlen asked the group. “It’s simple you reach out and you connect,” she said.

Boss thanked Landmark CEO Michael Souza for bringing Change Directions to Rhode Island and making Woonsocket the first place the program is being offered.

It ties into the state’s own efforts make changes in the health care system helping people to access mental health care “when they really need it,” Boss said.

“Mental illness needs to be treated in the same manner as any other illness,” she said. A person with a heart condition can expect to get help when they go into a doctor’s office with a problem and it should no different if a person is seeking treatment for a mental health issue, she offered. “Until I can say the same thing about mental illness, we aren’t there yet,” Boss said.

She also said awareness must improve so that people can take better care of their mental health just as they do with their physical health.

“Mental health is not just about mental illness, mental health is also about mental wellness,” she said.

The steps to make improvements can be simple ones, she said. Engage other people. Smile back, Boss said, if someone says hello to you, and be understanding of what another person might be coping with.

Someone might be letting on that they have a problem and you shouldn’t ignore those flags or signs, according to Boss.

Their wounds, their illnesses might be readily apparent and present an opportunity for others to take action, Boss noted.

“Be that someone to help them and move them to the next level of care,” she said.

Souza said Friday’s opening of Change Directions was not a one-day community service event but the beginning of an ongoing campaign to raise public awareness and take on the growing problems of substance abuse and opioid overdoses and unaddressed mental health concerns.

“Landmark and Prime Healthcare are dedicated to being proactive in making our community safer,” he said.

The community based initiative is supported by the Community Care Alliance, the Woonsocket Prevention Coalition, and YWCA.