Person and Family-Centered Approaches in Mental Health and Co-occurring Disorders Online Training Lesson #6: Individual Practices that Support Person and Family-Centered Approaches

wordmarks: Institute on Community Integration, Research and Training Center on Community Living, and University of Minnesota

Welcome to the Minnesota Department of Human Services Online Training Program in Person and Family-Centered Approaches in Mental Health and Co-Occurring Disorders

Training Program Description: This training program is designed for professionals in the mental and chemical health community. It may also be useful to others with interested in supporting people with mental health conditions to live well. This training program supports learners in understanding the value in trends toward person and family-centered approaches in Minnesota. It provides context to this movement that is Minnesota specific and helps learners support the vision the Minnesota Olmstead Plan. The content provides both context and enhanced skills in these approaches and practices.

Directions: Please scroll down or click on the page on the menu to see additional content in the lesson.

The following lessons are included in this training program:

  1. Lesson #1: The Context of Person and Family-Centered Practices in Mental Health Services in Minnesota
  2. Lesson #2: The Journey to a New Vision
  3. Lesson #3: Cultural Responsiveness
  4. Lesson #4: Support for Relationships and Valued Social Roles
  5. Lesson #5: Supporting People with Mandated Services and Choice Limits
  6. Lesson #6: Individual Practices that Support Person and Family-Centered Approaches
  7. Lesson #7: Organizational Practices that Support Person and Family-Centered Approaches
  8. Lesson #8: Engaging in System and Community Level Changes

A Note about Language: This training program recognizes that the terms mental health professional and mental health practitioner are recognized titles have specific meaning related to scope of practice within the Minnesota mental health system. However, for the purposes of this training, the terms practitioner or professional are used interchangeably to indicate any person with professional responsibilities in the system. This includes clinical professionals such as psychiatrists. It also includes social services professionals such as case managers or peer specialists. If a specific role or scope of practice is important to content, that is made clear in content.

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“It’s not about ‘what am I going to teach them?’ but “what am I going to learn?’”
– Co-Creation Participant, New Brighton, MN

"Ask the client what their goals are and what they need to be utilizing within their community to meet their needs and attain goals (social workers, occupational therapists, interpreters, faith-based leaders, etc.)."
– Participant, African Mental Health Summit, 2017

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A mental health practitioner meeting with a client.

Welcome!

Here is a description of the lesson you are starting:

Individual mental health professionals often focus on their own practices. They do not always consider the whole impact of the systems and society on people and their families. This lesson provides an overview of the importance of ensuring individual practices are person and family-centered. It helps the professional understand how this can lead to better outcomes for the professional as well as the person served. It also looks at the concept of stigma in the practitioner. This helps the professional prepare for reducing stigma in organizations, systems, and communities. It describes roles beyond direct contact with people for professionals to consider. It ends with a focus on self-care. When these types of activities become part of individual practice, they support greater cultural shifts toward person and family-centered approaches.

Learning Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able:

  • Regularly review their individual practices for alignment with supporting person and family-centered approaches.

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A profession engaged in learning and reflection.

Person and Family-Centered approaches require ongoing learning and growth through-out your career.

Benefits to Individual Practitioners

Embracing and embedding person and family-centered approaches may require rethinking of your roles in ways that are not 100% comfortable or familiar. Ongoing training and self-reflection through-out your career will be part of this. You will have to look beyond your own practice to system as a whole. This bigger picture may not be what drew you to mental health practices. However, attending to it may help you do better in direct practice. When these approaches are appropriately and consistently applied, they can help you feel more satisfied with your work. These approaches provide a way of focusing conversations and actions in a more meaningful way. They help transform treatment and support plans from requirements to helpful guides. They often lead to better outcomes for people, because people become more engaged and have better support from families. Watching this can be empowering and refreshing to the professional. It can make work more satisfying and meaningful.

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Reflecting on Attitudes and Beliefs

Fighting stigma in our communities must start with fighting stigma in ourselves.

Directions: Take the short quiz regarding attitudes and beliefs below.Choose your MOST accurate response to each of the questions. You will get feedback with each response.

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Adjusting Attitudes and Beliefs

It can be challenging to recognize our own biases and stereotypes about people. Many mental health professionals may have experiences that encourage these biases. Professionals work with people for whom natural support have not been enough. The must stay strong in the face of many hard stories. These may include incidents of completed suicides, overdoses, relapse, homelessness and the like.People needing services may lie to them or even try to take advantage of them.As a result, it’s important to take active steps to balance these experiences.

Directions: Click each item to learn more.

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Person and Family-Centered Approaches and The Olmstead Plan

Any mental health professional who works with a person who receives case management services or experiences frequent hospitalizations, homelessness, incarceration or the like should be familiar with the Minnesota Olmstead Plan. This plan is part of meeting the promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Many people with serious and on-going mental health conditions will meet criteria for disability. Even then they don’t, they can benefit from support that well-organized and focused on what matters most to them.

The Person-Centered Informed Choice and Transition Protocols and the MyMove Plan are tools published by the Minnesota Department of Human Services. They are meant to help case managers and those with similar roles meet their obligations to Olmstead. They can be useful tools for any part of the clinical team in understanding how to support people in person-centered ways. The transition protocols can be especially helpful in a situation where a person experiences frequent a crisis or service gaps. By considering and completing these components with the person, you will make it more likely that the person maintains stability and stays on the path of recovery. There are links to the mentioned documents in the resources section of this training program.

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A group of people attending a WRAP seminar.

Attending Person-Centered Thinking training and WRAP© seminars support skills.

Competence in Person and Family-Centered Discovery and Planning

This training program does not go into detail about specific person and family-centered discovery and planning processes or skills. There are a number of resources that can help you hone or expand your skills in these approaches as needed. The resource section of this program provides a summary of some that are specifically useful in the mental health community in Minnesota.

If you are already competent in motivational interviewing you are likely to be able to engage in effective person-centered discovery. If you are implementing trauma-informed care with a focus on recovery or resiliency you are likely using practices and approaches that align well with this. However, you will still be unlikely to seek all the information you need or organize it in a person and family-centered way without specific training in these practices. The information in this training program has focused on areas where mental health practitioners and people receiving services said they needed more information than is currently available. If you are new to person and family-centered practices you should explore more training in this area.

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Infusing Person and Family-Centered Approaches

Without actively engaging person and family-centered approaches, it can be easy for practitioners to make assumptions or miss important aspects of holistic care. For example: a person is missing their medication or appointments. This can be seen as unwillingness to participate in treatment. However, there may be literally dozens of reasons for this that have nothing to do with avoidance. These issues could be caused by lack of reliable transportation or money. The person may have a difficult living arrangement or be homeless. It’s important to learn about people’s lives and their struggles. Knowing about these issues can help you adjust your practice. It can also make you more knowledgeable about systematic issues people face.

Directions: Click on each item below to understand more about key components to person and family centered practices that you should consider you your daily practice.

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Two people sharing information. One person is pointing at a computer screen and the other person is writing information on a notebook.

Understanding and sharing information about local resources is a person and family-centered practice.

Attending to Gaps and Fragmentation in Services

Unless they have sought services themselves, many professionals have no idea what the experience is like. It can be a daunting, confusing, and unpleasant in many ways. For many people there are a hosts of gaps in services. Often they may see many different professionals who have no working knowledge of each other. Sometimes these professionals even make conflicting recommendations. To be good at supporting people with this you must understand the system and what it currently does and does not do for people with these conditions and their families. You may then adjust your individual practices in a variety of ways. This could include:

  • Being more flexible in scheduling and service delivery.
  • Learning about complementary or supportive community resources and sharing them through your practice.
  • Serving on community or governmental committees or boards that focus on system change.
  • Making time to collaborate and communicate with other professionals supporting the person.

All of these processes and activities have more meaning when the practitioner comes from a person and family-centered lens.

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Reflecting on Your Tools and Process

An important strategy for change is to review your tools and processes. Consider each part of your day. Which things make it easier to be person-centered and which do not? What are you struggling with? Try keeping a log of things that make it easier and things that are barriers from your perspective or from the people you support. Do this periodically for a brief period of time (for example, one day a week for a month or one week out of a month). Do this as a regular part of your professional development and growth.

Set aside some time each month to review this information. If you have a trusted colleague or a group of people where you work who are equally committed, come together and review and brainstorm solutions together. Decide if barriers are things can use your own creativity to overcome or if you need to take it further. Consider and record things that are working well. If you do need to take things to another level, consider what you are actually seeking and who can help how you do that. Coming with potential solutions and clarity about what you need, is much more useful that complaining that something doesn’t work. This type of processes can provide concrete evidence of issues that can be used to identify needed changes in policy, practice, and training. It can also call out system issues such as gaps in needed services or funding limitations.

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A group of friends relaxing together.

Take time to keep your life in balance.

Self-Care and Balance

Professionals in social services and mental health fields must work to maintain a sense of balance in their lives and at work. Especially professionals working with people who have the highest needs. The situations people experience are often complex and long-lasting. This can be wearing on professionals.

Using person and family-centered approaches at work can help with this. This focus often reignites hope on the part of the person, family and professionals. It often leads to better outcomes because people stay engaged. Even so, you may need to find additional ways to stay healthy and be well yourself, in order to support others in wellness.

You may consider developing your own person-centered wellness plan (such as a Wellness Recovery Action Plan©). You may develop a family-centered plan for your own family. By engaging these practices in your own life, you learn more about their power for helping people heal, stay healthy, and grow. This will help you apply them more artfully while also focusing on your needs for health and wellness.

Conclusion and Review

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Conclusion

This lesson was meant to help you achieve the following learning objective:

  • To regularly review your individual practices for alignment with supporting person and family-centered approaches.

Lesson Review

In this lesson you learned:

  • Developing your skill in being person and family-centered requires ongoing reflection and learning through-out your career.
  • Stigma is a problem in our communities. However, research shows that mental health professionals also carry stigma toward people with mental illnesses. It’s important to examine your attitudes and beliefs and actively seek to balance and expand them.
  • Each individual practitioner must have basic skills and understanding of established person and family-centered practices.
  • Each professional is part of a greater system and community. It’s important to understand the systematic issues from the viewpoint of the person and family. Professionals should work to buffer people from these issues and be active in system and community change.
  • Taking on the bigger picture of person and family-centered approaches can lead to additional stress as well as additional satisfaction. It’s important to focus on your own mental wellness as a professional.

Reviewed Trainings and Resources as Part of the Person and Family-Centered Approaches in Mental Health and Co-Occurring Disorders Training Development Project

Introduction to this Resource List

This list was developed as part of a training project to help mental health professionals, practitioners, and others in the mental health community in Minnesota enhance their ability to deliver services in person and family-centered ways. The project included identifying what training and resources were already available in Minnesota and how well they might meet the needs of the mental health and behavioral health community. There was a special focus on those in Targeted Case Management roles. A standard protocol that included a review tool and at least two reviewers was used to ensure products were reviewed consistently. The following materials were reviewed and ranked as being likely to be helpful to Mental Health Targeted Case Managers or those in similar or related roles.

Materials Developed by The Learning Community on Person-Centered Practices

The Learning Community on Person-Centered Practices

TLCPCP is an organization and a global volunteer community. It focuses on supporting people who have lost or may lose positive control because of society's response to the presence of a disability or other conditions. It does so through training and development of person-centered practices. The Minnesota Department of Human Services Disability Services Division and other divisions have invested in disseminating training materials developed by TLCPCP. They have also supported development of trainers in Minnesota. The following two trainings are commonly available in the state. TLCPCP also supports other types of training. To locate trainings in Minnesota you can go to http://pct.umn.edu. Certified trainers are also listed on The Learning Community’s website. Some local trainings listed at the Minnesota site are free; others have a fee.

Person-Centered Thinking- Two Day Training (now modularized)

Person-Centered Thinking is equivalent to a full two-day training. Training is completed in groups. The terminology and strategies of this training are aligned with some state and national regulations in the area of person-centered practices. The curriculum is generic and skills are transferable to any setting including mental health settings. A wide variety of professionals could benefit from this training. This can include professionals from any scope of practice who:

  • Are brand new to these skills and concepts.
  • Want to understand these skills and concepts in a broader context than individual practice.
  • Want to revisit these skills or expand their repertoire of strategies and approaches.
  • Want to network with others in and out of their agency around these practices.

The concepts and strategies in this curriculum have meaning and are useful in mental health practices. However, the examples in the core curriculum focus mostly on adults, are not all mental health related, nor always current to the context of community living. Content does not explicitly support deeper understanding of equity or diversity issues and does not use examples that represent diversity. Though there is a small portion in the new version on culture, on the whole, the curriculum does not attend to these issues. In addition, there is no specific tie in to how to use these practices to ensure family-centered practices. Trainers in this curriculum have various backgrounds. It would be important to select a training with a strong background in mental health services and supports if that is an important training need for your group.

Picture of a Life Two-Day Training

Picture of a Life is two-day training that provides in-person learning and applying person centered thinking and planning tools to develop a person-centered description. The process is focused on helping a person envision the life they want in their community. The training include a co-trainer with support needs and others who are this person’s natural or paid supporters. Trainees get a chance to watch and participate in interviewing processes and enhance their discovery skills. Values of choice, control, direction, and shared power are modeled in the training.

The quality of the training is highly dependent on the skill and knowledge of the facilitator and the willingness of the co-training and supporters to share. Participants will likely benefit more if they attend a session where the co-trainers needs are similar to those of the populations they support. There will be no explicit connection to the mental health practices of recovery, peer support, or cultural and equity practices if the facilitator does not have these skills, knowledge, and orientations. Person-Centered Thinking (described above) is required training before attending Picture of a Life.

Person-Centered Counseling Training Program

The Person-Centered Counseling Training Program is a blended learning model that embeds the Person-Centered Thinking skills and planning skills into online modules. The target audience for this training is counselors through the Aging and Disability Resource Centers (ADRCs) and others who are engaging in development of No Wrong Door systems. The online component is available in Minnesota via DirectCourse. For full review for this audience please see description below. For more information on the in-person day of training, contact The Learning Community for Person Centered Practices.

Materials Available Through the DirectCourse

DirectCourse is a national online curriculum for direct support professionals and similar professionals who support people to live in their communities. It is available in Minnesota through support from the Department of Human Services. The training programs and curriculum are self-paced, competency-based, and multimedia. The following materials from DirectCourse were reviewed for the mental health community.

College of Recovery and Community Inclusion (CRCI)

This online training was developed by Temple University Collaborative on Community Inclusion of Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities. It consists of approximately 38 hours of self-paced training for community based mental health workers. The set of available courses is listed below.

  • Understanding Community Inclusion
  • Cultural Competence in Mental Health Service Settings
  • Introduction to Mental Health Recovery and Wellness
  • Mental Health Treatments, Services and Supports
  • The Effective Use of Documentation
  • Universal precautions and Infection Control
  • Seeing the Person First: Understanding Mental Health Conditions
  • Professionalism and the Community Mental Health Practitioner
  • Understanding the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
  • Understanding Trauma and Its Impact

The courses in the College of Recovery and Community Inclusion can be helpful to any practitioners interested in recovery-based inclusion and self-determination models. The suite of courses in CRCI doesn’t use term “person-centered” but aligns with these approaches. They cover the scope of all mental health professionals. This material can be useful to support planners in mental health in apply the Minnesota Olmstead Plan expectations in their work. These courses consider culture and evidence-based practices. Incorporation of family into support is not included substantially.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services has purchased a limited amount of seats in Minnesota that are available for free. Contact Nancy McCulloh at mccul037@umn.edu. Rates for broader access will vary based on organization size. Information can be obtained by contacting Bill Waibel at Elsevier, b.waibel@elsevier.com.

Person-Centered Counseling (PCC) Training Program

These online materials were explicitly designed for the No Wrong Door System of Long Term Services and Supports (LTSS). It considers all populations, all ages, and all methods of payment for LTSS. Person-Centered Thinking and Planning skills are a core of the training program. There is a whole course on family caregiving and other lessons on family involvement. However, content is not strictly focused on mental health.

This content would be best for disability generalists who have a portion of their potential recipients living with serious mental illnesses. Another potential target audience is staff affiliated with Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics or Behavioral Health Homes or similar services, where clinicians and LTSS and community professionals need to have a coordinated understanding of person-centered practices across clinical and community settings. This curriculum needs to include a one-day in-person training in PCT to be considered complete as far as PCT skills. It would need a skilled training to support groups in organizing a blended learning model for above purposes. It is not ideal as core training for MH TCM because of the more broad disability focus but is rooted in recovery principles, self-determination, and culturally responsive services.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services has purchased a full contract for this curriculum in Minnesota that makes training available for free and/or with minimal administrative costs. Go to: https://mn.gov/dhs/partners-and-providers/training-conferences/directcourse/to learn more.

Materials through the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health

The Yale Program for Recovery and Health, Person Centered Approaches has a focus on research, consultation and tools in the area of person-centered approaches in mental health and co-occurring disorders.

The following resources related to authors and researchers at this program were reviewed.

Partnering for Recovery in Mental Health: a Practical Guide to Person-Centered Planning

Partnering for Recovery in Mental Health is a practical guide for conducting person and family-centered recovery planning with individuals with serious mental illnesses and their families. This guide represents a new clinical approach to the planning and delivery of mental health care. It emerges from the mental health recovery movement, and has been developed in the process of the efforts to transform systems of care at the local, regional, and national levels to a recovery orientation.

This is a very solid and recommended resource that looks comprehensively at person and family-centered practices in planning specific to mental health conditions and co-occurring conditions. It provides context to recovery, self-determination, cultural needs, family support, and shared power. It is a good overall resource that would be helpful to any professional working with people with serious mental illnesses and required to complete support or treatment plans, including targeted case managers.

This book is authored by Janis Tondora, Rebecca Miller, Mike Slade and Larry Davidson and was published in 2014 by Wiley-Blackwell. It is available online as an ebook or from booksellers in hard copy, for an approximate cost of $42.00.

Getting in the Driver’s Seat of Your Treatment: Preparing for Your Plan

This resource is a downloadable booklet for organizing information a person might want in a treatment or support plan. It is meant to help people organize their thoughts and information in ways that are likely to yield person-centered goals and approaches in a treatment plan.

The strengths of this resource include: It is easily downloadable from a public site. It is concrete, process-oriented, flexible and applicable to many circumstances, and written in plain language. It gives people structure and context to taking the time to identify their goals and preferences in key areas outlined in the Person-Centered Informed Choice Protocol (DHS, 01/17). It asks people to consider including people important to them in the process. It would be a great foundation for developing a person-centered plan. Professionals and practitioners for all level of practice in mental health would benefit from being familiar with this tool. Case managers, support planners, and those in similar roles would benefit the most. There is a Spanish language version available.

Limitations of this resource include: The rights information is specific to the state of Connecticut (but could be easily customized to Minnesota). It provides little context for bigger picture aspects of history and professional responsibly. While it may work with a variety of cultures and circumstances, it does not support practitioners in how to adapt for a variety of cultures and circumstance. Family and natural supporters are considered as support but not as people who may need support. Information would need more work to translate into an operational treatment plan. Literacy would be an issue with this tool if used without assistance.

Authors are Tondora, Miller, Guy and Lanteri. Published in 2009 by Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health.

This online resource is available as a .pdf document at no cost:

Materials Offered Through the Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery

The Copeland Center for Wellness and Recovery promotes mental health recovery through education, training, and research based on WRAP©. (Wellness Recovery Action Plan). It is a peer run, non-profit organization that provides training, consultation, and program activities to support the wellness, recovery, community inclusion and peer support journeys of individuals. They work with the owners of WRAP© materials at Advocates for Human Potential (AHP) to ensure the fidelity and quality implementation of WRAP© Facilitation in the health care system. There are a variety of training and consultation options offered through Copeland.

Locally people can connect and take seminars through the Kaposia which is an International WRAP© Center for Excellence.

Seminar I: Developing Your Own WRAP©

The Developing Your Own WRAP© workshops is co-facilitated by WRAP© Facilitators in a variety of formats and agendas, including 8-12 week WRAP© groups, 2-3 day workshops, retreats. Participants in these workshops will learn how to develop their WRAP© as a personalized system to achieve their own wellness goals. These workshops are for anyone and can apply to any self-directed wellness goals. WRAP© is a safe, effective wellness process that has an evidence-base for supporting mental health recovery. It is s self-directed, peer supported process that the person engages with in ways that they prefer. WRAP© is an ongoing processes of reflecting on and engaging approaches and lifestyles that support personal wellness. Processes can be used by individuals and organizations to move to a true recovery and self-determination focus in services and supports. WRAP© has proven to be an effective approach to working with children, youth, and families and caregivers to improve relationships, feel more hopeful, create support systems, learn to self-advocate, and put a greater focus on their personal overall wellness.

WRAP© must be delivered with fidelity in order to meet the evidence based criteria. This include that participation in WRAP© be completely voluntary, that at least two peer facilators who are skilled, trained, and mentored facilitate this process, materials are appropriate, and all processes align with the values and ethics of WRAP©. (To learn more about fidelity download and read the document The Way WRAP Works!.) Professional who have their own WRAPs can benefit from the process and also understand the value and power of WRAP© in supporting recovery.

WRAP© is voluntary, focused on wellness, owned by the person, and avoids clinical or medical language. It is a powerful tool for helping people reconnect with hope, personal responsibility, and personal strategies for recovery. However, it is not something professionals can have access to without a person’s permission and it is not something professionals can require of people. If people chose to complete a WRAP© on their own, it can support their ability to more clearly define many of the aspects of the PCICTP. It is something to recommend, especially to people who have lost touch with what recovery and a life worth living means to them. However, there can be no expectation that people participate unwillingly or in order to receive services.

The cost for this entry course ranges from $100-400.00 approximately. Locally, there may be a possibility for a need-based reduction in the fee or waiving of the fee.

References

Credits

The content of materials developed through this contract was co-created with members of Minnesota’s communities. Co-creation include structured and open-ended conversations as well as listening sessions. It also included seven structure co-creation processes conducted in different parts of the state. These sessions include professionals and people with lived experience or their families. Community members were also invited to review and edit the content of online materials (Community Reviewers). Participants were kept informed about ongoing progress through a website. 

The following sessions helped to shape refined definitions and areas of focus after the initial environmental scan was complete.  

  • African Mental Health Summit (2017)- Open-ended conversation with a large group regarding goals, definitions, and gaps.
  • American Indian Mental Health Conference (2017)-Structured conversation with a smaller group around goals, definitions, and priorities.
  • DHS Mental Health Division –Structured conversation with a larger group around definitions and priorities.
  • Parent Catalyst Leaders Group (Hennepin County) – Listening session with parents who were newer to the system and guided by more experienced parents around gaps and challenges.

There were seven (7) Co-Creation Groups (in 6 communities) Rochester, Duluth, Mahnomen, Minneapolis, St Paul (2), and New Brighton.  A total of 89 people participated in these groups. Participants included a spectrum of people with a variety life experiences and backgrounds. These processes were developed to support the maximum engagement of each participant.  The following people attending a co-creation session:

  • Thomas Anderson, Minneapolis
  • Laura Armstrong, Minneapolis
  • Mina Blyly-Strauss, Minneapolis
  • Carol Brogan, Chatfield
  • Brenda Caya, Duluth
  • Mary Chazen, St. Paul
  • Rose Chos, Duluth
  • Cristina Combs, St. Paul
  • Jennifer Conger, Savage
  • Heidi Crees, Minneapolis
  • Debbie Crittenden, Bloomington
  • Tom Crittenden, Bloomington
  • Nicole Duchelle, Lake City
  • Polina Duchelle, Lake City
  • Amber Dukowitz, Duluth
  • Josephine Eades, Duluth
  • Karen Ellian, Duluth
  • Feisal Elmi, Minneapolis
  • Angela Elwell, Eagan
  • Amelia Fink, St. Paul
  • Kassandra Flake, Minneapolis
  • Mike Francis, Eagan
  • Carl Gardner, Minneapolis
  • Colleen Garman, Minneapolis
  • Gerald Geist Jr., Moorhead
  • Cathy Gillman, Cottage Grove
  • Triasia Givens, Minneapolis
  • Susan Govern, Minneapolis
  • Amy Granquist, Duluth
  • Jane Haas, Stillwater
  • Kristin Hale, Duluth
  • Ricky Hamm, Rochester
  • Keven Hardy, Rochester
  • Tom Haselman, Minneapolis
  • Vivian Henry, St. Paul
  • Jenny Isaacson, Duluth
  • Melissa Johansson, Maplewood
  • James Johnson, Duluth
  • Carolyn Keefner, Westminster, Co.
  • Jessica Kisling, Minneapolis
  • Bob Klade, McIntosh
  • Kay Knight, Duluth
  • Fonda Knudson, Fergus Falls
  • Jeanne Kolo-Johnson, Moorhead
  • Maggie Lemasters, Duluth
  • Jenny Linder, Duluth
  • Tulu Lope, Inver Grove Heights
  • Ginger Madeiros, St. Paul
  • Diane Marshall, St. Louis Park
  • John Martin, Minneapolis
  • Kristy Matzke, Rochester
  • Lamont Mayo, Minneapolis
  • Nick Mazzoni, Duluth
  • Alvin McCoy, Minneapolis
  • Willard McDonald, Rochester
  • Kurt Meyer, Minneapolis
  • Cari Michaels, St. Paul
  • David Moses, Rochester
  • George Nadeau, Minneapolis
  • Beth Nelson, Fergus Falls
  • Richard Oni, Birchwood
  • Peggy Ostman, Duluth
  • Jovi Parm, Minneapolis
  • Rose Plentyhorse, Minneapolis
  • Tyler Rinta, Minneapolis
  • Ruby Rivera, St. Paul
  • Michael Ruhl, Minneapolis
  • Ryan Sandquist, Minneapolis
  • Julie Scharver, Fergus Falls
  • David Schreyer, Two Harbors
  • Kelsey Shoden, Rochester
  • lenda Smith, Fergus Falls
  • Cora Spear, Burnsville
  • Jennifer Thomas, Maple Grove
  • Nelly Torori, St. Paul
  • Maria Tripeny, Bloomington
  • James Van Druten, Duluth
  • Sarah Vinueza, Minneapolis
  • Kenya Walker, St. Paul
  • Claudia Waples, South St. Paul
  • Eileen Ward, West St. Paul
  • Terry Wasnick, Duluth
  • Linda Weber, Rochester
  • Bryant Wheeler, Minneapolis
  • Tobias Wilde, Moorhead
  • Shannon Williams, Duluth
  • Tera Wiplinger, Rochester
  • (Wendy) Maxuan Wu, Minneapolis
  • Ann Zick, Osage

The authors for the online lessons were:

  • Susan O’Nell, Project Director
  • Jody Van Ness, Project Staff
  • Merrie Haskins, Project Coordinator

There were seven community reviewers recruited to review the content of online materials that were developed. These reviewer were mental health professionals and included family members of service users. The following people served in this role:

  • Allison Brockway – Sherburne County
  • Tamba Gordon – Hennepin County
  • Tom Haselman – Hennepin County
  • Jessica Kisling – University of Minnesota
  • Jane Lawrence – Community Reviewer
  • Jeff Olson – Headway Emotional Health
  • Dorothee Tshiela – Face to Face Health and Counseling

In addition Darrin Helt of the DHS Behavioral Health Division served as editor and approver. 

Web development, design, and media team:

  • Amanda Webster
  • Shawn Lawler
  • John Westerman
  • Kristin Dean
  • Sarah Hollerich