This guest post was contributed by Campbell Masys, Marketing Coordinator at Peregrine Health—a TPCA Partner.
Mental Health Awareness Month is a time to recognize the work community health centers are doing to bring behavioral health care to the people who need it most. Across the country, health centers are reaching patients in rural and underserved communities who would otherwise go without care entirely, and the health centers that have made behavioral health a central part of how they deliver care share an approach worth understanding.
Health centers that are seeing strong behavioral health outcomes are ones where behavioral health services are available at the clinic, providers are connected rather than operating in separate tracks, and patients do not have to navigate an entirely separate system to get care. As NACHC describes it, “CHCs are a key resource for these patients who otherwise would not have access to behavioral health services. CHCs integrate behavioral health into their model of care so patients who access primary care services can also receive mental health and substance use treatment in a familiar environment free from stigma.”
Tia Gitgood, LCSW, a Peregrine Health provider at Eastern Iowa Health Center, describes it this way: "Mental health is not just something to treat when life feels broken. It is like a muscle that benefits from consistent care and strengthening." That framing reflects exactly what integration is designed to make possible: behavioral health care that is accessible, ongoing, and woven into the same relationship patients already have with their health center.
Health centers at every stage of that journey are doing meaningful work. The ones just beginning to build out programs, the ones refining workflows, and the ones expanding into new communities are all part of closing a gap that has been too wide for too long. This Mental Health Awareness Month, we are celebrating the work community health centers are doing every day to bring behavioral health care to the people who need it most and we are honored to be a partner in that journey.
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