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Mountain Plains - Mental Health Technology Transfer Center

The Mountain Plains - Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (MP-MHTTC) provides comprehensive training, resources, and technical assistance to mental health providers and other practitioners in Region 8. The MP-MHTTC team will develop new, and identify existing, resources which will then be disseminated and easily accessible across the region and the MHTTC network. The team will also build and maintain strong collaborative relationships with key stakeholders in the region and nationally.

Our Goals

  • Accelerate the adoption and implementation of mental health related evidence-based practice in Region 8.
  • Heighten the awareness, knowledge, and skills of the Region 8 workforce that addresses the needs of individuals living with mental illness.
  • Foster regional and national alliances among culturally diverse practitioners, researchers, policy makers, family members, and consumers of mental health services.
  • Ensure the availability and delivery of publicly available, free of charge, training and technical assistance to the mental health field, including CMHS grant recipients in Region 8.

What Services We Will Offer

The MP-MHTTC will offer training and technical assistance to the public mental health workforce, inclusive of areas of pre-professional, post graduate, and continuing preparation. The Center will serve Region 8 which includes the states of Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.

The primary focus of MP-MHTTC is to provide training and technical assistance to mental health service providers serving persons with mental health disorders, especially those with serious mental illness or a serious emotional disturbance. Particular attention will be given to serving providers with limited access to service delivery systems.

Anticipated trainings and technical assistance will include topics such as:

  • Suicide Prevention
  • Assertive Community Treatment
  • Assisted Outpatient Treatment
  • Recovery Oriented Systems of Care
  • Psychiatric Advance Directives
  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
  • Crisis De-escalation

Materials will be identified, developed, and disseminated across the six states which will include multi-media training packages. A thirty-person advisory board, with a majority of members with lived experience, will guide the activities of the MP-MHTTC team.

Who Is Involved

Faculty from the University of North Dakota (UND), program staff from the Behavioral Health Program at the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education (WICHE), and staff at the Center for the Application for Substance Abuse Treatment (CASAT) at the University of Nevada-Reno.

  • Thomasine Heitkamp, Principal Investigator & Project Director (Professor at UND; PI and Co-Director of the MP-ATTC in Region 8)
  • Dennis Mohatt, Co-Project Director (Vice-President of Behavioral Health WICHE)
  • Program Coordinator (TBD at UND)
  • Lynette Dickson, Associate Project Director (Associate Director of the Center for Rural Health at UND)
  • Dr. Maridee Shogren, Technical Trainer (Associate Clinical Professor of Nursing at UND)
  • Dr. Andrew McLean, Technical Trainer (Chair- UND Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at UND)
  • Dr. Sarah Nielsen, Technical Trainer (Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy at UND)
  • Dr. Shawnda Schroeder, web and curriculum manager (Assistant Professor at UND)
  • April Hendrickson, Program Evaluator and Assessment (Research and Technical Assistance Associate at WICHE)
  • Dr. Elizabeth Tupa, Technical Trainer (Director of Education and Research at WICHE)
  • Dr. Rebecca Helfand (Program Director at WICHE)
  • Nancy Roget, Direct Enhanced Professional Learning Series and establish Communities of Practice (Co-Director of the MP-ATTC in Region 8; Director of CASAT)

Additional Partners

When Our Services Will Be Available

Funding for this 5-year project began on August 15, 2018, and we will begin providing services by November 15, 2018.

How We Will Measure Our Success

  • Increase the # of people in the mental health or related workforce trained in mental health-related practices/activities.
  • Increase the # of individuals who have received training in prevention or mental health promotion.
  • Increase the # of individuals contacted through program outreach efforts.
  • Increase the # of programs, organizations, and communities that implemented evidence-based mental health-related practices and activities.

This work is supported by grant H79SM081726 from the Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.