Banking on KC – Tom Petrizzo of Tri-County Mental Health Services
Listen Now, or read the transcript below:
Kelly Scanlon:
Welcome to Banking on KC. I'm your host, Kelly Scanlon. Thank you for joining us. With us on this episode is Tom Petrizzo, the CEO of Tri-County Mental Health Services, which is a nationally recognized behavioral health services organization that serves Clay, Platte, and Ray Counties in the Kansas City area. Welcome, Tom.
Tom Petrizzo:
Thank you. Thanks, Kelly. Thanks for having me.
Kelly Scanlon:
So Tri-County Mental Health Services, it's been a safety net in the Kansas City area in the Northland in particular for more than 30 years. What are some of those services? And who do you serve?
Tom Petrizzo:
Yeah. So as a safety net, we're primarily serving people that may not have insurance. They're qualifying for Medicaid or Medicare, perhaps. And then we do serve some people that have insurance, but that's not our core. We're really there for folks that are lacking significant or sufficient insurance to go seek out mental health services. We are not a hospital. Some people think that we have beds available. We don't have beds available. It's like you go into your doctor's office, if you have a primary care doctor, it'd be very similar in coming to Tri-County. You're going to see a clinician who will do an initial assessment. We do that every day. In fact, we have walk in assessment, where you can just walk in from 8:30 AM to 1:00 PM every day. And then we have doctors on staff, nurses, therapists, counselors, and what we call case managers. They're people that go out in the community and help our clients, provide support and linkages to other services.
So some of the core services that we have that are very common are we have medication services with our doctors and nurses. So if you need medication for depression or anxiety, we have psychiatrists and nurses that can prescribe that medication as needed. Then we have therapists who are doing ongoing counseling, whether it's individual, with families, groups. We have that available. And then we also have crisis services, so we're available 24 hours a day through the crisis line to answer calls for people in the Northland who need help with mental health challenge of some kind. Yeah.
Kelly Scanlon:
An organization like yours, undoubtedly, you rely on others. You probably have a network I assume that helps you to effectively deliver your services. So can you talk to us about how you work with some of your community partners?
Tom Petrizzo:
Yeah. So we do partner with the hospitals in our area. We help see people that might be coming into the emergency room and have a behavioral health challenge, and try to divert them into Tri-County Services if they're eligible and appropriate for that, versus them going inpatient. You'd want to divert that hospital if you can, so that's one. And then we're also in very closer partnership with law enforcement in the Northland, so we have over 30 law enforcement agencies that are part of a coalition called TRI-CIT, which is Tri, C-I-T. And CIT is Crisis Intervention Training. It's a national model for law enforcement. A CIT trained officer is trained to intervene with folks who might be struggling with a mental health or substance use challenge. And lots of research behind if they have that CIT training, much less likely to do hands on physical interaction, people get injured, even including the officer. So the more officers you can get CIT trained, the better for the officer and the community.
And so we have partnerships with them. We have four mental health trained clinicians who are on the call to go out with law enforcement. So law enforcement can call one of them and say, "Hey, I'm out at Vivian Road, and we're talking to somebody who looks like they're struggling with a mental health problem. Can you come and help us intervene?" And we'll do that. With do have a whole cadre of clinicians that we call school based clinicians, so they're actually ... Their job location is the schools, anything from elementary up to high school, in the Northland. And the there's over 35 of them now, and that includes folks that are trained in what we call expressive arts. So they're using an art clinical intervention like music, or art, or creative writing to help a child with a behavioral health problem of some kind.
Kelly Scanlon:
Talk to us about the personal and the economic impact of unmet mental health needs in the United States. For example, if you didn't exist, if your organization didn't exist, there would be that many more unmet needs. So what is the economic and personal tool of that?
Tom Petrizzo:
It's huge. I forget the last time I saw the estimate of the adverse economic impact of unmet mental health and substance use challenges. It was in the billions of dollars, as you can imagine. I can't remember the exact. It was hundreds of billions of dollars. If we didn't exist, specifically to your question, then what the result would be, would be more hospitalizations, unnecessarily, obviously, and people going into jails because offenders would not have somebody available to help intervene with law enforcement like we have. So law enforcement wouldn't have a whole lot of options and would say, "Well, we're just going to take this person to jail," even though the offense may be a very low level offense that's really not hurting anyone.
So the unmet need there would, without the proper resources and support for an organization like Tri-County, you'd have more people going into hospitals, more people going into jails, and then more people, I hate to say it, hurting themselves. Suicide would be a bigger issue. And there's a huge ripple effect of that throughout families and communities when suicides or overdoses as well occur.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yes, absolutely. And then you also think about even people who may be, if they're not getting the help that they need, impact on productivity and the absenteeism, and the list probably goes on when you think about the economic toll.
Tom Petrizzo:
Yes. Yeah. So there's a concept called presenteeism, which means people are present at their job, but they're really not fully engaged or engaged well enough. And some of that is attributable to unmet or un-helped, the person's not getting help for a depression, or perhaps anxiety, or just stress in general that makes itself known as some kind of mental health problem.
Kelly Scanlon:
So how can employers help promote good mental health in the workplace?
Tom Petrizzo:
Yeah. There's quite a number of things that employers can do to help their employees on the mental health side. So one of the first is just to have a good EAP, an employee assistance program, available to your staff, and make sure they know about it, and you promote it regularly, like maybe monthly emails, have the EAP people come onsite, talk about what's available. And usually through an EAP, the employees would have immediate access to a counselor, somebody to talk about what they're experiencing at that moment, just like if you needed to go see a doctor immediately. Some employers have made that available on demand. Well, that's the way an EAP is.
Second thing is you can have events at your work site that are around mental wellness, either educational events, even have a support group. I know there's some employers that just have a time built in during lunch for staff to go talk to somebody, not as a full-blown therapy session, but just support. I'm experiencing stress because of this, or I have teenagers at home, and here's some of the challenges. There could be a whole myriad of examples.
Kelly Scanlon:
Because the issues that you're talking about, they are wide-ranging.
Tom Petrizzo:
Yes.
Kelly Scanlon:
They may be something that causes some anxiety and stress that wouldn't rise to the same level as somebody who's contemplating suicide, as you mentioned earlier.
Tom Petrizzo:
Correct.
Kelly Scanlon:
So there's a big, wide range.
Tom Petrizzo:
Correct. Yeah. So sometimes I talk about the difference between feeling stress that just bothers you during the day and maybe not keep you as productive, versus having a true mental health diagnosis that is really impairing your functioning, like you're not getting to work, or you're not going to school. Or when you're there, you're not doing anything. You're getting in trouble maybe. There's a difference there. So some employers have put in place these just ongoing support items, like I said, like support groups, making EAPs available, even having mental health days or parts of days, where staff can take off part of the day to really just do something that they enjoy. And maybe it's kind of a stress buster, where they have some time for themselves.
And then I've also heard of some employers having volunteer days, where their employees go out and volunteer at a local nonprofit or charity. And there's lots of research that shows being engaged in your community, being active and helping others is really a protective factor against stress and worry and depression and anxiety.
Kelly Scanlon:
I read about that too. What is the science behind that?
Tom Petrizzo:
Well, some of that is there's some science now that's showing you actually get a dopamine hit from helping others or being engaged in a helpful activity, just like you would when you listen to your favorite music or something of that sort, or you get a runner's high. There's a similar effect that they found now by going and doing volunteering activity, or just helping others. And if you do that regularly, that effect on your physical wellbeing and your mental wellbeing just grows. It's a positive effect.
Kelly Scanlon:
Yeah. That makes perfect sense. I would venture to guess too, that by having these kinds of events within the workplace that you just described, it creates an awareness within the workplace about mental health, and it also probably because it's being talked about, it takes away some of the stigma. Sometimes employees might be nervous or have concerns about expressing that there's something bothering them. But when you provide an environment in which it's safe to go see someone, or that you have an EAP program, that reduces that kind of a concern, I would think.
Tom Petrizzo:
Yeah. It does. It what we call normalizes the behavior, so it's okay to go to the support group and just talk with your colleagues about what are your current stressors.
Kelly Scanlon:
Sure.
Tom Petrizzo:
Again, as we were saying earlier, that doesn't mean you have a mental illness.
Kelly Scanlon:
No.
Tom Petrizzo:
That just means you're engaging with others around a common stress topic, which is really productive and helpful, supportive in a way.
Kelly Scanlon:
What do you think is the biggest misperception about mental health?
Tom Petrizzo:
I think mainly that there's still a perception that maybe it's not a real illness, like mental illness is not really a true illness, that it's more of a character issue or a choice. That's particularly true around substance use, that it's a choice or a character deficiency of the person, versus truly a biological illness. But we really know from research in the last 30 to 40 years that there's a lot of connections between a person's personal biology and a predisposition toward depression, or anxiety, or some other mental health problem. And what we know more about the brain now as well that there's predispositions in certain brain chemistry towards schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, even some of those serious mental illnesses. We can now make correlations about that being more of a biological component. Now that's not to say there's not an external or an environmental component because if you're raised in a stressful environment, or you experience trauma, or violence, or see violence, that's going to have an effect as well as the biological. So those two things go together now.
Kelly Scanlon:
You have a conference coming up in May, and May is Mental Health Awareness Month, that's going to be attracting people from several states. You have some nationally known speakers coming in. Tell us about that conference and how it creates awareness about mental health.
Tom Petrizzo:
Yeah. So we started this conference about eight years ago as part of May's Mental Health Awareness Month. And when I say we, it's not just Tri-County, there's a group of eight mental health centers that serve the Kansas City Metro area, three on the Kansas side, five on the Missouri side, that have gotten together to put on this conference. That group is called Metro Council, by the way, that's serving Kansas City. What we've done is, every year, we hold this conference, and our host is Oracle Cerner, and it's at their Innovations Center down off Banister. This year, it's May 11th, Thursday, May 11th and Friday, May 12th. Part of it is to educate and build awareness about good mental wellness because that is May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It's a national campaign.
Normally, we have 500 to 600 people that attend. Many of them are from the behavioral health community in Kansas City that are going and they can get continuing education credits. But there's also a whole variety of other people there. There's business people there, there's people from HR and wellness work departments that attend. There's folks from the Chamber of Commerce because it is a wide range of presentations and materials.
Kelly Scanlon:
Sure. And all to promote awareness and to probably best practices for the HR professionals who attend. You were just talking about: What are some of the things that you can do in the workplace? It's a chance for them to learn about those kinds of best practices.
Tom Petrizzo:
Yes. So as I said, the clinically focused presentations for clinically trained people like therapists, counselors, but then there's also some just about general wellness that are more appealing to the wellness HR people in your workplace. This year, our keynote speaker is Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, and she's written several books really about brain health. She's a neuroscientist from Harvard, and she had a brother who had schizophrenia and got interested in brain health as a young adult, and now has written several books. And she's going to be talking about good brain health and how that can be a positive thing in your day to day or your personal life.
Kelly Scanlon:
There's a special website for that event. And I understand that all the information, if there are business owners listening, or HR professionals, as you mentioned, or just the general public who might want to attend that, the information will be available when on that website?
Tom Petrizzo:
Yeah. So the website would be for the Metro Council. It's called the Metropolitan Community Council of Behavioral Health Centers. That information for this year's conference should be updated in March.
Kelly Scanlon:
Another very important function that you perform is you're part of the national 988 Crisis Hotline. Tell us about that.
Tom Petrizzo:
Yeah. That's a really good one. So last July, 988 started. They call it a crisis and suicide lifeline. What I tell people though is you don't have to be suicidal, or your family member, or friend, be suicidal to call 988. 988's really there if you're just experiencing a fairly significant mental health challenge, you feel overwhelmed, you're not sure what to do even. Call 988. I mean, it's very simple. It's like calling 911. So 988 is available, and then throughout the nation, there's regional call centers that will answer that 988 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And then that person will try to assist over the phone. And if they cannot handle it totally over the phone, they may transfer it to a local provider like Tri-County Mental Health or another community mental health provider, who will also try to handle it on the phone and/or send somebody out to see the person.
Kelly Scanlon:
In addition to the 988 hotline, for people who are in a situation where they feel like they need some assistance for family members who may have identified others in their family who could benefit from services like yours. What other resources are available? What should they do? Who should they be reaching out to?
Tom Petrizzo:
As I mentioned earlier, we have the eight mental health centers that serve Metro Kansas City. And the list of those is on the Metro Council website. So if you go to that website, there's some resources there for sure. And then if that's not ... You're thinking, Well, I'm not sure I want to go to quote, a mental health center, or you have some trepidation about that, certainly you could start with your primary care doctor. I've told people that. That might be more palatable or acceptable to a loved one, or to help someone. Encourage them to go see their primary care doctor and then talk about maybe the symptoms they're having. And then that doctor would make a referral to a mental health specialist. And that's a good route to go because sometimes a doctor can even facilitate that in a more speedy fashion, hopefully, with a referral.
One other thing that folks can do is really, if you're feeling like you need help, is to really go get the help. If you're feeling like, hey, I'm feeling overly anxious about something, or something's bothering me that's impairing my ability to focus, or be productive, or be all present with my family and friends, then yeah, go seek that help. And sometimes it is simple as starting with a trusted friend who you can confide in, and they may have some ideas of resources, or clergy, if you're part of a church. You could start by talking to a clergy member of maybe a faith leader in the church. They're usually trained to know, okay, this is beyond my skillset and I'm going to give you some resources that are out there in the community. So that would be another place to start.
Kelly Scanlon:
The bottom line is resources do exist. Be sure to take advantage of them, either yourself, or if you know someone, help them get the help they need.
Tom Petrizzo:
Yeah. I've heard Dwayne Johnson, you know The Rock, the actor, the big, strong actor, he's been promoting it's really a sign of strength to ask for help and go seek out help. It's not a sign of weakness because he had that in his own personal life. So if The Rock can do that, we can all do that.
Kelly Scanlon:
Absolutely. Tom, thank you so much for all that you are doing and for being here today to share these resources with us.
Tom Petrizzo:
Thank you, Kelly.
Joe Close:
This is Joe Close, president of Country Club Bank. Thank you to Tom Petrizzo for being our guest on this episode of Banking on KC. Mental and behavioral health issues can take a devastating personal toll on individuals and their families and friends. They have a large economic and community cost as well. But as Tom points out, as an employer, you can create a workplace that promotes mental health wellness and encourages the use of programs like EAPs for those seeking services. Importantly, if you know someone who needs a professional to talk with, or is in crisis, direct them to the resources available in your community. Thanks for tuning in this week. We're banking on you, Kansas City. Country Club Bank, member FDIC.