By Trimmel Gomes, Florida News Connection
A new program is helping Florida's family doctors tackle the youth mental health crisis, especially in areas with few mental health specialists.
Some 29 of the state's 67 counties have no child psychiatrists, so the "Building Bridges of Understanding" initiative is equipping primary care providers to diagnose and treat conditions like anxiety and depression directly in their offices.
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Bob Anthony, executive director of the nonprofit Adolescent Wellness and a volunteer with Rotary International, which helped bring the program to Florida, pointed to the long wait families often face.
"The problem that Adolescent Wellness had identified is delay – up to an average 10-year delay – between first symptom and first treatment," Anthony explained. "This is a national problem."
To end the wait, the program provides a five-hour, self-paced online training for clinicians from Boston Children’s Hospital, along with family toolkits and a hotline for consultations with child psychiatrists. After a successful pilot in Southwest Florida, it is now being rolled out to Community Health Centers statewide.
Dr. Salvatore Anzalone, vice president of clinical and business development for Healthcare Network, a key architect of the pilot program, said the goal is early intervention to prevent more serious crises later and speed up the time for patients to get care.
"This will unburden our pediatric psychiatrists to be able to see some of the more severe cases, the more complex cases," Anzalone pointed out. "And give them the opportunity to manage what they really need to be managed without having a wait list."
Early data from the pilot show the model is working. At Healthcare Network, he noted use of the program’s techniques has led to a significant reduction in depression and anxiety symptoms among young patients.
Dr. Keenan Tamm, director of behavioral health for Healthcare Network, said the program has directly changed care. Since 2021, doctors have written more prescriptions for antidepressants and antianxiety medications.
"After completing the program, they've increased their prescription rates," Tamm observed. "In these cases, the primary care doctor is treating anxiety and depression, whereas before we were referring them to psychiatry, and that brought on wait time."
The initiative is a partnership between Boston Children’s Hospital, Rotary Adolescent Wellness, Healthcare Network, and the Florida Association of Community Health Centers. Its member clinics offer care to the public regardless of their ability to pay.
An orientation webinar for health centers is scheduled for Oct. 8. Free public resources, including the toolkits used in the program, are available online.
