Latest / Becker's Healthcare Behavioral Health / Dr. Sarah Jerstad, Medical Director of Behavioral Health Services at Children's Minnesota

Transcript

Dr. Sarah Jerstad, Medical Director of Behavioral Health Services at Children's Minnesota · Becker's Healthcare Behavioral Health

• 0:00
  Welcome everyone to the Becker Health Care podcast
• 0:02
  series. I'm Mariah Muhammad, Ryder and moderator with
• 0:05
  Becker Health care. And I've thrilled to have...
• 0:07
  With me today, Doctor Sarah T, Medical director
• 0:09
  of outpatient, behavioral health services and Children's Minnesota.
• 0:13
  Doctor is very nice have you on the
• 0:14
  podcast today. To get it started would you
• 0:16
  mind, please introducing yourself and telling us a
• 0:18
  bit about your background?
• 0:21
  Absolutely. My name is Sarah, as you mentioned.
• 0:24
  And I've been a psychologist at children's Minnesota
• 0:27
  for about 17 years.
• 0:29
  I did my training at the University of
• 0:31
  Minnesota, and
• 0:32
  My work has really been with helping kids
• 0:35
  of all ages. I work with kids
• 0:38
  from age 2.
• 0:40
  To 18 and beyond.
• 0:42
  And
• 0:43
  I do all kinds of different therapy here,
• 0:45
  But 1 of the things that I do
• 0:47
  is
• 0:48
  direct to our team,
• 0:50
  and our outpatient team serves kids,
• 0:53
  who have issues of depression,
• 0:55
  anxiety,
• 0:57
  adhd adjustment issues, family struggles,
• 1:00
  and all kinds of things like that. So
• 1:02
  we love helping kids here at children's Minnesota.
• 1:07
  Yeah. Thank you so much for giving us
• 1:08
  that insight. And the first question that I
• 1:11
  really wanted to ask you is what are
• 1:12
  the biggest issues you're following health care and
• 1:14
  bi year so far?
• 1:17
  Yeah. The biggest issue in healthcare from my
• 1:21
  stand, which is
• 1:23
  for the mental health.
• 1:24
  Issues. We are following
• 1:27
  basically a mental health crisis.
• 1:29
  Many people have heard about this
• 1:31
  in terms of
• 1:33
  struggles with kids since Covid, but I really
• 1:36
  wanna highlight that this mental health
• 1:40
  crisis started well before Covid.
• 1:43
  If you look back about 10 to 15
• 1:45
  years at the rates of
• 1:47
  anxiety and
• 1:48
  depressed mood.
• 1:50
  We started to see increases
• 1:52
  in those problems
• 1:54
  starting around 20 10 and 20 11.
• 1:57
  And those have continually
• 1:59
  increased with kind of a spike around the
• 2:02
  time of the Covid pandemic,
• 2:04
  10 And so if you separate some of
• 2:07
  those out and look at the specifics, you
• 2:10
  see that girls.
• 2:12
  Rates have increased quite a bit more than
• 2:16
  boys.
• 2:17
  And also,
• 2:18
  kids who have
• 2:21
  identified as
• 2:22
  Lgbtq
• 2:23
  have higher rates of depression
• 2:25
  and suicidal thoughts.
• 2:28
  So the trends that we're paying attention to
• 2:30
  is the significant
• 2:32
  increase
• 2:33
  in mental health concerns really over the last
• 2:36
  decade.
• 2:37
  And probably spiking
• 2:39
  around Covid 19.
• 2:43
  Yeah. That is very, very interesting insight that
• 2:45
  you just shared.
• 2:47
  Is there anything that is exciting you right
• 2:50
  now or is there anything that's making you
• 2:51
  nervous whether something you're doing personally within the
• 2:54
  organization?
• 2:55
  Or anything else you're seeing in the news?
• 2:58
  Yeah. So I think when we think about
• 3:00
  the problems that we just talked about.
• 3:02
  With the increase in mental health concerns,
• 3:05
  we have to do something about that. So
• 3:08
  what excites me just generally and
• 3:11
  and here at children specifically
• 3:14
  is that we really are focusing on mental
• 3:17
  health care across the continuum.
• 3:19
  What we have to recognize is that kids
• 3:21
  are in all different kinds of places and
• 3:23
  states.
• 3:24
  And so
• 3:25
  first of all, we want to think about
• 3:28
  basic
• 3:29
  outpatient mental health care. We're providing that here
• 3:31
  at children's.
• 3:32
  And
• 3:33
  we really wanna see that kids get access
• 3:35
  to that across the community,
• 3:37
  We partner with schools and we partner with
• 3:39
  other organizations to see that children can get
• 3:43
  access to that basic,
• 3:45
  outpatient mental health care wherever they are.
• 3:48
  And then at children's, 1 of the things
• 3:50
  we're also doing
• 3:51
  is trying to help find kids
• 3:54
  where they are.
• 3:56
  So if they come for a primary care
• 3:58
  clinic here,
• 3:59
  we have mental health providers
• 4:01
  embedded
• 4:03
  in those clinics. So they don't have to
• 4:05
  think about going to a different place
• 4:07
  or finding a new location for an appointment.
• 4:10
  They can get that care right where they
• 4:11
  are
• 4:12
  Also, if we think about our specialty clinics.
• 4:14
  So kids who have chronic illness
• 4:16
  like diabetes or like asthma
• 4:19
  or other things like that and they're coming
• 4:21
  to get specialty care.
• 4:23
  We have providers,
• 4:25
  mental health providers who are embedded in those
• 4:27
  clinics as well. So we're trying to be
• 4:28
  creative, and I think this is hap this
• 4:30
  is trend that I'm seeing
• 4:32
  really around the country. It's trying to be
• 4:34
  creative about helping people get care
• 4:37
  where they are, putting and instead of kind
• 4:40
  of having to... Them having to do the
• 4:42
  leg to get that care.
• 4:44
  And then 1 of the other things is,
• 4:47
  here at children's, for example, we have
• 4:50
  increased our ability to give acute care.
• 4:53
  So unfortunately there are are kids who have
• 4:56
  suicidal thoughts who just are not able to
• 4:59
  function day to day.
• 5:00
  And we can provide that care through our
• 5:02
  inpatient through a partial programming
• 5:05
  And then we can also partner
• 5:07
  with folks in the community, for example, if
• 5:09
  they even need higher care, which should be
• 5:11
  residential programming.
• 5:12
  We really want to be able to provide
• 5:14
  different steps and levels of care to kids
• 5:19
  for what they need. And so really, if
• 5:20
  you think about it, what we're trying to
• 5:22
  do is
• 5:23
  to create as many opportunities for kids to
• 5:26
  get the help they need.
• 5:27
  From my standpoint, even from a very basic
• 5:32
  age, the basic young age, we wanna start
• 5:35
  giving kids and parents
• 5:37
  tools
• 5:38
  to that hopefully, most of the kids aren't
• 5:40
  getting to that level of crisis where they
• 5:42
  need those acute services.
• 5:45
  So for example, 1 of the therapies that
• 5:47
  I do here at at children's,
• 5:50
  and number of us do is called parent
• 5:52
  child interaction therapy. And we start working with
• 5:54
  kids, From ages 2 to 7 and their
• 5:57
  parents together. And we're treating some of those
• 6:01
  main basic problems that happen at a young
• 6:03
  age and starting to give skills at that
• 6:06
  early age. We feel like if we can
• 6:08
  start to address problems early
• 6:10
  and really start to address things. Then host
• 6:13
  fully,
• 6:14
  when kids get through,
• 6:16
  their grade school years and middle school and
• 6:19
  high school years,
• 6:21
  We're not seeing as many acute problems as
• 6:24
  we have been seeing. So really trying to
• 6:25
  hit things from, a number of different levels
• 6:27
  in the mental health world. And to me
• 6:29
  that is exciting.
• 6:32
  Yeah. I I completely agree, It definitely does
• 6:34
  sound exciting, and I love the solutions you're
• 6:36
  bringing to this huge huge problem.
• 6:39
  That's obviously everywhere in our nation. And, doctor
• 6:42
  before I let you go. The last thing
• 6:43
  I wanted to ask you is what of
• 6:45
  the most effective health leaders need. In order
• 6:48
  to be successful in the next 2 to
• 6:50
  3 years do you think?
• 6:52
  Yeah. I think the most effective healthcare leaders
• 6:56
  needs first of all,
• 6:58
  to be able to partner
• 7:00
  with 1 another. And so when we again,
• 7:03
  when we think about providing care across that
• 7:06
  continuum
• 7:07
  we are in a community.
• 7:09
  So we hear at children's
• 7:11
  really work at partnering with folks in our
• 7:14
  community because
• 7:16
  as much as care as we can provide
• 7:18
  here, we can't provide the only care. And
• 7:21
  so when we can partner with
• 7:24
  people at different community
• 7:27
  organizations in different parts of the metro, when
• 7:29
  we can partner with schools,
• 7:31
  where we can say, hey, can we even
• 7:33
  provide a little education at your schools, can
• 7:35
  we partner with
• 7:37
  teachers, caregivers and others, right where kids are
• 7:40
  every day, When those partnerships start to happen
• 7:43
  and the communication is happening between those organizations.
• 7:47
  Then we know we're starting to really address
• 7:51
  the mental health concerns
• 7:53
  right where they are and we're doing it
• 7:55
  together.
• 7:56
  And so from my perspective, when we think
• 7:59
  about the future,
• 8:01
  that's 1 of the biggest things. The second
• 8:03
  thing is,
• 8:04
  and we do this now,
• 8:06
  can we leverage technology?
• 8:08
  You probably are aware that
• 8:11
  technology
• 8:12
  is everywhere. And for many parents and kids.
• 8:17
  This can be
• 8:19
  a a big source of stress and frustration.
• 8:21
  Parents might try to limit the amount of
• 8:23
  time kids use on their screens,
• 8:26
  and it might screens might even end up
• 8:28
  kind of displacing,
• 8:31
  healthy activities,
• 8:33
  But on the other side of things, there
• 8:35
  are so many potential
• 8:38
  and we're already seeing this now where we
• 8:40
  are using some
• 8:43
  apps and other, technology
• 8:45
  to supplement
• 8:46
  therapy
• 8:47
  and to supplement working on goals.
• 8:50
  And so we really want as healthcare leaders,
• 8:53
  we really want to take advantage of what
• 8:56
  we have. Technology has 2 sides. To it,
• 8:59
  but we wanna say what can we do
• 9:00
  for the good
• 9:02
  to make the most of that
• 9:04
  and and really help kids
• 9:07
  use that effectively
• 9:09
  to their benefit.
• 9:12
  Yeah. Thank you so much for those final
• 9:14
  thoughts stock. There's definitely been a very informative
• 9:17
  discussion. So I wanna thank you so much
• 9:18
  for coming out Becker health care, and I
• 9:20
  look forward to connecting with you soon.
• 9:23
  Thank you so much for having me.