Mental health is just as important as physical well-being, and few know this better than the team at Associated Pediatricians. Beginning this year, Associated Pediatricians has partnered with Purdue University Northwest (PNW) to take part in Northwest Indiana Identification and Management of Pediatric Experience of Trauma and Underlying Stress (IMPETUS), which is implementing routine screenings and in-office interventions for childhood traumatic stress.
Amanda Zelechoski, NWI IMPETUS project director and professor of psychology at PNW, heads the project and has known Dr. Elizabeth Campbell, M.D., partner-owner of Associated Pediatricians, for years. Campbell had long dreamed of a way to bring mental health services under the umbrella of care offered by her practice. Zelechoski, meanwhile, had noticed that despite a number of great mental health clinicians in the community, the Region simply lacked the overall raw capacity to address the needs created by an increasing rate of childhood trauma.
“Locally and nationally, we’ve been seeing concerning trends relating to kids’ anxiety and mental health needs,” she said. “A global pandemic certainly didn’t help that. There are a lot of kids in our community who have been through very difficult things, and that can be anything from a parent having a serious illness or having a medical trauma of their own, to the extreme cases of child abuse or neglect.”
Campbell and Zelechoski both sought a way to address this need, so, when a grant opportunity through the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration became available, Zelechoski leapt at the chance to create a formal partnership. The application succeeded, and PNW was awarded a five-year, $3 million grant to support mental health services and interventions for childhood traumatic stress.
The grant funds are being used to embed behavioral health professionals at the pediatric clinics, allowing for brief child trauma screenings, in-office and group interventions, and to train 25-50 therapists each year in a number of child trauma intervention models.
“At the end of the five years, we imagine serving over 30,000 kids and families in different ways, like screenings,” Zelechoski said. “We’re coming towards the end of the first year, which was mainly doing development work such as hiring staff, and we’ve already screened over 1,800 kids. That’s with the screenings only really being implemented over the last three or four months.”
These screenings are simple, and naturally implemented as part of any child’s regular check-up at Associated Pediatricians. When potential traumas or adverse childhood experiences are identified, the team at the clinic offers an immediate in-office intervention. It is a strong word for a simple, easy meeting where the clinicians teach families evidence-based skills to manage trauma and stress.
“Lots of kids go through very difficult things, and we want to be able to keep an eye on their stress and teach parents and kids skills to manage it,” Zelechoski said. “Even something like a transition to a new school can be a trauma, it doesn’t have to be something extreme. We can teach them the skills to develop that into resilience rather than long-term mental health problems.
Zelechoski noted that when children report physical issues, such as an upset stomach, it can often be the consequence of ongoing stress or mental trauma.
“It could be a medical issue, but it could also be anxiety about going back to school or being bullied,” she said. “Kids often don’t have the language to say, ‘This is what’s really going on’ and ‘I’m super nervous.’ If a kid talks about a tummy ache, a lot of times that’s because they don’t know how to distinguish between ‘I ate something bad’ and ‘I have butterflies in my stomach because I’m so nervous.’”
Partnerships with clinics such as Associated Pediatricians, who Zelechoski notes are often the first responders to trauma, are critical as a result. She noted that Associated Pediatricians’ staff has seamlessly incorporated this essential mental health component into its process.
“They’ve been such an amazing partner because they understand that connection,” she said. “They truly want to provide integrated care, and just need the resources and capacity to do it. They’ve been incredible at letting our team come in and work hand-in-hand with them. They’ve been so flexible and adaptable, and that’s not just the doctors – it’s the nurses, the medical assistants, and the reception staff.”
To learn more about Associated Pediatricians, visit associatedpediatricians.com. For more information about NWI IMPETUS, visit pnw.edu/psychology/nwi-impetus.