Reconnect Reenter Rebuild
Summit builds on mutual mental health support
“Reconnect, Reenter & Rebuild” was the theme for the World Mental Health Day Summit Oct. 8 at Imperial Valley College. An annual collaboration between IVC and Imperial County Behavioral Health Services, World Mental Health Day resumed this year after a brief hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The World Mental Health Day summit brings our community, our Imperial Valley together to reflect and build upon mutual mental health support in our community,” said Scott Dudley, Behavioral Health Manager of the Imperial County Behavioral Health Services’ Center for Clinical Training. “Everyone is a stakeholder in mental health.”
The summit promotes ICBHS and IVC to the community, builds relationships between agencies, provides community networking and learning experiences relative to ICBHS’ treatment operations. This summit is a vehicle for positive media coverage, and provides outreach and engagement by featuring the mental health community.
“It’s important to talk about mental health to reduce the stigma,” ICBHS Director Leticia Plancarte- Garcia said as the summit opened. “This event helps raise awareness of mental health and the services we offer.” Plancarte- Garcia, a 30-year Behavioral Health staff member and the department’s first Hispanic female director, said, “Over the years we have seen the department grow and provide more services and resources.”
She said the summit’s theme
– “Reconnect, Reenter &
Rebuild” – comes in the wake of a pandemic that greatly impacted people’s mental health and created a worldwide disruption of services for mental, neurological and substance use disorders. “This summit will help us come together,” she said. “to bring awareness about our services, and to help us reconnect and rebuild as a community.”
“All of us have suffered,” Plancarte- Garcia said. “We’ve suffered loss of our finances, experienced loss of life, suffered through isolation. In times like these we ask, ‘ How can we help ourselves and help others?’ We all have the capacity for resiliency, but resiliency isn’t unlimited. There is still a lot of anxiety, fear, depression, and some have contemplated suicide. We need to stop, reflect on how we and those around us have been affected.”
Community members representing different aspects of mental health participated, Dudley said, adding, “We come together shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, giving a venue and a voice to them, as well as the voice of ICBHS.”
“Inclusion, lived experience, and open-heartedness are the trinity of community mental health,” Dudley said.
The summit’s 28 sessions were divided into seven topic tracks representing ICBHS’ wide range of programs. Included were topics such as “Supporting Children’s Emotional Well
Being During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which offered tips for caregivers and parents along with information about services available to children. Other key pandemic-related sessions focused on suicide prevention, compassion fatigue, overcoming backto-school anxiety, self-care.
The Substance Use Disorders program addressed recovery during and after a pandemic, and the treatment services it provides for adults and adolescents.
Also on hand were Rose and Austin, rescue dogs who have been trained through ICBHS’ PET Project, and former project member Betty Boop, a labradoodle who since has been adopted.
Portions of the summit were available virtually for those unable to attend in person, enabling its reach to extend far beyond the summit itself.
Supporting mental health is not a one-day affair, Dudley said. “It’s really day to day, and that’s what this day accomplished,” he said. “We are focusing on specific mechanisms. It’s an educational experience.”