Families with children in need of psychiatric help in Alabama’s DeKalb County now have more options when seeking mental health services. On September 13, 2013, Governor Robert Bentley announced that funding was made available through a $50,000 grant award from the Appalachian Regional Commission along with matching funds of $23,000 to provide new telehealth services.
The funding will help the DeKalb County Children’s Policy Council expand their telemedicine partnership with the University of Alabama and hire a new part time therapist so that a new telehealth site can be established within the county.
Currently in the county, the local mental health center is the only provider of psychiatric evaluations for low income families and is only able to provide evaluations for a one half-day each week, according to Council officials.
The therapist that is hired will conduct local patient evaluations, manage telehealth appointments, and coordinate services with local providers. County schools and other local organizations will refer children and their families to the program after an initial assessment. Mental health professionals at the university will use telecommunication links to conduct additional evaluations. “Families with children who need mental health assistance will be able to find it much easier to find help with this expansion,” Bentley said.
For the past several years, the University of Alabama’s College of Community Health Services (CCHS) has been providing telepsychiatry services to rural mental health centers in the western part of the state by linking mental health centers directly to psychiatrists at the university.
Last year, the university received funding to build a video-based decision support system to help rural children in the state obtain a quicker diagnosis if they show signs of Autism Spectrum Disorders. The video equipment was needed, as it can take several years to get an appointment via a wait list to receive advice from the Autism Spectrum Disorders Clinic at the university. Now rural children can receive help much sooner.
Today, doctors at the Medical Center video record patients showing signs of autism and then send the videos to the university’s Autism Spectrum Disorders Clinic. The Medical Center then returns the processed versions of the videos with comments complete with red flag indicators from psychologists, speech therapists, and university medical center pediatricians if there are mental health issues.