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John & Kathy Ackerman Mental Health Professional Development Center, Sandra Eskenazi Mental Health Center
The Ackerman Center was launched in March 2023 to help address the post-COVID bump in demand for mental health services by tackling a related problem—a significant shortage of mental health workers. To do this, the center wants to create a strong, diverse pipeline of well-trained health care professionals.
“We’re trying to reshape the way mental health care is delivered,” said Ackerman Center Director Kelley Mills. “We’re trying to provide quality experiences that prepare the workforce to meet the needs of the community so that they can practice in a community health center. At the same time, we’re trying to reduce the stigma of mental health work while taking the pulse of the community so we can best meet its needs.”
The issue is of particular importance to the Sandra Eskenazi Mental Health Center, given that while some 67,000 Marion County residents suffer from substance abuse disorders and one in four experiences a mental illness in any given year, Eskenazi can serve only about 16,000 patients annually.
Hence the Ackerman Center’s focus on practical education that allows students to work with patients early in their training and helps them to weather the emotional strains of such work. The latter concern led to the adoption of a 32-hour work week for many of Ackerman’s frontline workers.
“We also have wellness groups for our staff,” Mills said. “The focus is on resiliency and how to take care of our employees while they do this really challenging work.”
The center’s programs can be broadly grouped into three initiatives: Recruiting new workers using workforce development plans created for all mental health care disciplines, providing ongoing workforce development initiatives, and making sure students receive “real world” clinical
training experiences.
The center’s community outreach efforts also include its Mental Health Toolkit, providing training and certification in Mental Health First Aid to support primarily minority populations, youth and vulnerable adults in Marion County. The toolkit helps participants access mental health resources and recognize people who are struggling. To date, some 2,000 members of the public have taken the program, ranging from IndyGo drivers to foster parents.
That effort, and many others offered by the center, seem to be bearing fruit.
“Last year was a lot of work, but it was also the first year since I’ve been in behavioral health human resources that we didn’t have enough positions for the qualified candidates that graduated from our programs,” Mills said. “For years, we’ve wanted to move the needle on this problem, and finally we had more qualified graduates than we did open positions. We could actually take a step back and think about adding positions.”•
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