Mount Sinai aims for its Center for Stress, Resilience and Personal Growth to be a “beacon” for healthcare workers seeking mental health support.
The center was formed to support Mount Sinai’s employees at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the center is expanding to support the public.
Jonathan DePierro, PhD, associate director of the center, told Becker’s he hopes it can be a resource for healthcare workers who may be reluctant to seek care at their own employer or do not have access to care in their own community.
“We pride ourselves on being very responsive and connecting to people very quickly,” he said. “Because we have such expertise in taking care of all manner of healthcare workers within the institution, including physicians and nurses, but also administrative staff and research staff. We want to be positioned as a center of excellence for healthcare workers, and also for the public.”
The center offers therapy, medication management and resilience training. Since 2020, the center has provided more than 18,000 behavioral healthcare visits and 600 educational courses to Mount Sinai employees.
The center has designed programming to reach all Mount Sinai employees, in clinical and nonclinical roles, Dr. DePierro said.
“For example, we noticed security officers at the health system were under a lot of stress but weren’t coming to us for care,” Dr. DePierro said. “So we went to them. We hosted events in conference rooms, we brought them lunch as a group. We started doing trainings with them about mental health awareness, right where they work during their huddles.”
The center also meets busy providers where they are. He cited how providers at the center joined ICU and emergency department huddles at the beginning and end of the day to provide 10-minute training on mental health.
Treatment at the Center for Stress, Resilience and Personal Growth is now available for members of the community. Though the system was designed to treat healthcare workers, there is plenty of overlap and common concerns with the public, Dr. DePierro said.
“A lot of us have common concerns,” he said. “Healthcare workers are coming to us not necessarily because of the residuals of COVID-19, but because life stuff happens. Some people have work stress, but some have had a loss in the family, are headed toward divorce or struggling with a depressive episode that might not have anything to do with work.”
Employees who have participated in the program have reported a 40% decrease in anxiety and depression symptoms, and a 73% decrease in PTSD symptoms, according to a March 6 news release from the health system.
For health systems looking to invest in their employees’ mental health, Dr. DePierro advised other systems to be wary of “quick fix” solutions. Trust and buy-in are the foundation of any successful mental health program, he said, so it is important to understand what employees want and will use before making an investment.
“You can have a beautifully funded, millions of dollars investment in a behavioral health service, or app, or outreach program,” he said. “If people don’t know about it and don’t trust it, they’re not going to use it.”
