Missouri establishes playbook for combatting mental health
By Harrison Vapnek
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COLUMBIA, Missouri (KOMU) — This week, the Missouri Department of Mental Health (DMH) released its Missouri Well Being Playbook to share strategies and resources to promote organizational wellness.
The seven steps of organizational well-being per the playbook include: creating infrastructure, team engagement, well being measurements, intervention designs, program implementation, impact evaluation and establishing sustainable culture.
This playbook comes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to DMH Director of Trauma Services Rachel Jones.
“People were personally being impacted by COVID, professionally impacted by COVID, less people being able to actually work, and more stress involved with work,” Jones said.
The American Hospital Association released a well-being playbook of its own for hospital and health care leaders in 2019. A second version was released in 2021 as result of the pandemic.
“We thought it would be awesome if Missouri created our own and showed other Missourians what we’re doing in our own hospitals and health care settings,” Jones said.
The playbook is designed for not just the health care industry, but can apply to the education system, social services and service industries.
“COVID really impacted a lot of industries that nobody had considered,” Jones said. “It does focus on health care, but it can be broadly generalized to a lot of workplace settings.”
A large aspect of the playbook’s initiative is the “service over self” motto, the preexisting idea from pressure created in service industries that the people being taken care of are more important than yourself. Jones says some people dismiss their own mental health in that matter.
“What happens from service over self is that people get burnt out,” Jones said. “Those people eventually can have a lot of chronic health problems, interpersonal problems for the people that they love and care about, and may even have problems at work.”
The playbook took around six months to write, with meetings once a month in a group setting led by Jones.
“It was definitely a group effort of people who wrote it, researched it and edited it,” Jones said. “Every time we met, we were sharing all our ideas, we were revising, we were adding more resources and learning more spotlights to include.”
Behavioral health services in Missouri are in support of the playbook’s actions and motives.
“Burrell Behavioral Health is supportive of this evidence based resource for organizations of all sizes,” said Burrell Behavioral Health Central Region President Mat Gass. “We think access to care and workforce well-being in Missouri is good for business. Employers who support the emotional wellness and well-being of their staff have a significant advantage in this economic climate.”
The Missouri DMH plans on releasing a second version of the playbook in the next two or three years, based off the research results of the initial one.
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