How behavioral health providers can stay whole

Behavioral health can be isolating work, so fostering connection is a priority for Chase Brexton Health Care. 

Lisa Pearson, vice president of behavioral health at Baltimore-based Chase Brexton, said therapists are trying to "stay whole." In addition to encouraging connection and community, the organization is also encouraging therapists to step out of their offices for lunch. 

Ms. Pearson will speak on "Tackling Social Determinants of Health to Improve Behavioral Health Outcomes" at Becker's Behavioral Health Summit. She caught up with Becker's to explain her approach to whole-person health, and why it's time to flip integrated care on its head. 

Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

Question: What's the biggest challenge facing behavioral health right now? 

Lisa Pearson: No. 1 is workforce. The hiring, the tenacity of the staff. I think we may have underestimated the work of the behavioral health workforce during COVID, and are beginning to see some of that fatigue in some ways. People are trying to continue to do the work and stay whole. 

The other trend is integration. How do we do this work not in a silo, but really begin to become great partners in this work with other disciplines? People are whole people. We're not trying to pick apart one part of them, but really becoming good at integrating with primary care, nutrition, social work, dental health and looking at the whole person. 

Q: What are you doing at Chase-Brexton to address workforce challenges? 

LP: One of the things we're working on is creating a culture that's worth being a part of. I think one of the things that can be challenging when you're a therapist is that it's very individual work. How do we create community so people have places to meet socially, meet professionally in consultation times? We're doing a campaign to take lunch. We're really encouraging people not to sit at your desk and eat by yourself, or work through lunch, but creating spaces where you can walk out of your office. 

Q: What are your top priorities when it comes to integrated care? 

LP: Our organization is an integrated team. We have doctors, pharmacists and nutritionists. We're all here, co-located together and we share an electronic health record. It's really about prioritizing the time to make it happen. Our first iteration of that process, we conducted a pilot called integrated mental health, that is still in process. We trained our therapists to engage other modalities outside of CBT, DBT, in terms of engaging with our clients. We've also started Friday morning consultation times with our psychiatry team. Those are our first two efforts in terms of integration across interdiscipline. 

Q: What are you watching from a policy perspective in 2025? 

LP: For us in particular at Chase Brexton, which has LBGTQIA roots, is really looking at what the administration is doing around gender care. There is a lot of talk, but not a lot of solid ideas around execution. That uncertainty, in and of itself, creates some angst. 

Q: What are you feeling optimistic about in behavioral health now? 

LP: Our integrated mental health pilot and moving that forward is what I am excited about. It gives us an opportunity to serve our clients in the way I believe will really work. I think oftentimes when we think about integration, we're thinking about putting a therapist in primary care, and how do we make that warm handoff to the doc from that person, so they can now engage. We need to flip that on its head, because we've done that before. I don't know if it panned out the way we thought it would. 

There's also a lot of work that we're doing in the community in terms of collective conversation around mental health. When people go to the doctor they know what to expect. When you say you need a therapist, what does that mean? What are you committing to? Oftentimes we'll get referrals from medicine because the doctor believes you need a therapist. When we engage with people, they say, "I'm good." So, we need to be able to have more conversations that are casual, educational and supportive around mental health and therapy, and what that means. Getting our certified peer recovery specialists out into the community, having those conversations in a more natural setting, around what therapy can do and how it's helpful. 

Copyright © 2025 Becker's Healthcare. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy. Cookie Policy. Linking and Reprinting Policy.

 

Featured Whitepapers

Featured Webinars