A new face at Mount Marty is trying to recruit more new faces for the behavioral healthcare field in the Yankton area.
Whitney Schroeder, OTR/L, is the project leader for Yankton’s BEST (Behavioral Health Experiential Student Training).
She started in the position Jan. 12, when she was hired for the Behavioral Health Education Teacher and Liaison position at Mount Marty.
The program is funded through a federal Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Rural Communities Opioid Response Program (RCORP). The official name of Yankton’s program is Yankton’s BEST (Behavioral Health Experiential Student Training).
Schroeder is an occupational therapist but is working on her teaching certification, to be ready to start in earnest this fall.
She took the time to explain the program to the Press & Dakotan.
“Within this program, there are four deliverables, or four buckets, if you will,” she said. “One of the buckets is going to be my primary role, and that’s teaching a dual-credit Psychology 101 course at the high school. Students can enroll, and then they will have college credit. … Once they graduate, they will already have those credits toward college courses.
“The next aspect is going to be internships. Yankton High School already has a lovely program with ‘World of Work.’ I’m working very closely with Carla Hummel at Avera, and she is helping me get the students in and creating this lovely, beautiful experience. We’d like to replicate that program in the behavioral health sector.”
Schroeder said she is working closely with LCBHS in setting up internship programs.
“They’re doing a great job of making that organizational chart of what they want those internships, or shadow experiences, to look like for their students,” Schroeder said. “The next bucket is ‘groups.’ They already have (various extracurricular clubs and groups) within the high school, so it’s just trying to enhance those groups to serve students.”
The final “bucket,” according to Schroeder, will be simulation labs where students will have a chance to practice what they’ve learned in a simulated environment.
“They’ll be practicing setting up a healthy environment and specifically — the behavioral health world is going to look a little bit different than your hospital setting — and getting students comfortable having those good therapeutic conversations with individuals,” Schroeder said. “I think the sim lab will (act as) a debrief from their ‘World of Work’ experience. We’ll ask questions like, ‘What are you seeing? What do you need help with? How can we role-play this out and go from there?’ Building those competence skills and those really good communication skills, which are really the bread and butter of mental health and behavioral health in my opinion, will be a crucial part of the process.”
Schroeder explained why a program like this has become necessary.
“What they’re seeing is a massive shortage of behavioral health workers, and they don’t have the workforce to help individuals who are struggling with addiction to recover from that addiction,” she said. “The idea is, we’re starting the progression of making a pathway for enhancing the behavioral health workforce.
“We see the behavioral health needs and then, on the other end, we can’t fulfill those needs. Why can’t we fulfill those needs? Because we don’t have the workforce. The question will be to see if South Dakota is able to retain the workforce, too. It’s going to be very interesting to research down the road.”
With the program in its infancy, it will take a while to see how it all plays out. Schroeder said she’s fascinated at the prospects and the research available down the road.
“We’re at the ‘planting the seed’ stage,” Schroeder said. “My position was born because of this grant. It’s a lovely thing to see all those partners come together and want to pour those resources into the next generation. For Mount Marty to be willing to take this project on and take on an employee shows their commitment. And the relationship between Mount Marty and Avera is so unique. I’ve never really, honestly, seen a university work so closely with a healthcare system. It’s beautiful thing to see.”
How will it look 10 years down the road?
“I hope that we can fill everybody’s bucket with this,” Schroeder said. “I want to see that link from middle school to high school to college and then college onto grad school. A high percentage of behavioral health jobs require at least a grad-school, master’s level degree.
“I would just like to see numbers in 10 years. What do our numbers look like? What have we seen? And not only whether we’re gaining students going into the field, but are we retaining them? Mental health burnout is very real. How can we support individuals in the field and wrap our arms around them? If it’s continuing education or it’s just simple community support … Yankton is a hub of mental health services, so how can we help one another?”
It will take time to see those results, but in the meantime, Schroeder and all those involved with the project are getting their feet wet and preparing for the fall.
“We’ll see more of this come to kind of fruition in the fall,” she said. “I’ll start my courses. Then, the goal is to roll out that internship pathway within the behavioral health field in the fall, and then start the simulation, as well. Right now, it’s building the relationships and preparing.”