Learning Tracks
Not sure where to start on the thousands of resources in the PsychU library? PsychU has created learning tracks to give community members a resource guide! Pick a learning track, review the materials outlined, and complete the Test Your Knowledge questions to participate in a resource ‘crash-course’ on one of the topics listed below.
Filter by Topic
Collapse Filters ▼Adherence
After completing the Adherence Learning Track, participants should have learned:
- The role of medication adherence in serious mental illness.
- New tools to assess and address medication adherence.
- Risk factors associated with non-adherence.
- The impact of digital interventions on medication adherence.
- Outcomes associated with improved medication adherence.
Care Coordination & Integration
After completing the Care Coordination & Integration Learning Track participants should have learned:
- Barriers to and strategies for integrated behavioral and medical health care.
- The definition of Transitions of Care and how to identify all members of the health care team.
- Traditional care transition programs.
- Care coordination recommendations, specific to the mental health population, including: optimizing medication regimen, communication of complex medical plans, and screening for other co-occurring conditions.
- How the discharge care team collaboratively develops a comprehensive transition planning guide with the patient and family.
Cognitive Function In Schizophrenia & Bipolar Disorder
After completing the Cognitive Function In Schizophrenia & Bipolar Disorder Learning Track, participants should have learned:
- The differences between cognitive functioning in schizophrenia compared with bipolar disorder
- The importance of brain changes throughout the course of illness for both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder
- The incidence and functional consequences of neurocognitive deficits in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia
- The options to address impaired cognition and functioning
Decriminalization Of Mental Illness
After completing the Decriminalization of Mental Illness Learning Track, participants should understand:
- Understand difficulties and trauma that the wrong placement can have for those suffering from mental illness
- Learn about some of the initiatives and resources that are in place to route those with SMI away from the prison system
- Realize the personal cost that mental illness has on families and friends that must navigate a loved one’s mental illness and the behavioral health system
Early Intervention In Psychosis
After completing the Early Intervention In Psychosis Learning Track, participants should have learned:
- The potential barriers to reducing the duration of untreated psychosis
- The medical rationale for early intervention in psychosis
- Four early intervention programs and their findings
- Potential ways to implement early intervention programs in mental health settings
Introduction To Neurobiology & Psychopharmacology
After completing the Introduction to Neurobiology & Psychopharmacology Learning Track, participants should understand:
- The role of neurotransmitters in the pathophysiology for bipolar disorder, major depression, and schizophrenia
- The role of neurotransmitters in psychopharmacology
- The impact of neuroinflammation on psychiatric illness
- Treatment considerations for serious mental illness
Measurement-Based Care
After completing the Measurement-Based Care (MBC) Learning Track, participants should have learned:
- The importance of using measurement-based care, both generally and specifically with patients who have major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder.
- How implementation of MBC can improve outcomes in clinical settings.
- The connection between residual symptoms, lack of full remission, and issues with functional outcomes, and the importance of these facts when assessing patients.
- The different scales which can be used with patients with major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.
PCP/Integrated Care
After completing the PCP/Integrated Care Learning Track, participants should have learned:
- Some of the difficulties that arise when attempting to integrate mental health care and some of the best practice models of successful care coordination and integration.
- How populations are best served by integrated care what examples of issues that might prevent care from reaching patients.
- Payment methods and models that ensure integrated care is paid for and maximizes the success of the integration.
PCP/Measurement-Based Care
After completing the measurement-based care Learning Track, participants should understand:
- The importance of using quality measures in providing and standardizing care.
- The impact of value-based reimbursement and how to prepare provider organization for it.
- Familiarizing provider organizations with various quality measures and best practices.
Peer Support
After completing the Peer Support Learning Track, participants should understand:
- What peer support specialists are and how they are certified
- The potential benefits of incorporating peer support specialists into teams treating individuals with mental health and substance use disorders
- Barriers and challenges that still exist to fully integrating peer support specialists into organizational, service delivery, and reimbursement models
Pharmacist
After completing the Pharmacist Learning Track, participants should understand in four core areas (schizophrenia, stigma and adherence, treatments and LAIs, and bipolar disorder):
- Critical definitions
- The identification of treatment approaches
- The role of a pharmacist’s contribution to each area
Quality In Mental Health
After completing the Quality In Mental Health Learning Track, participants should understand:
- The growing importance of value-based care in behavioral health
- Current behavioral health quality measures
- Providers’, and payers’, roles in quality improvement
- Strategies that the behavioral health field is employing to address and improve quality, including customer-oriented continuous quality improvement processes
Social Determinants Of Health
After completing the Social Determinants Of Health Learning Track, participants should understand:
- How social determinants of health are defined
- The impact social determinants of health can have on population health outcomes
- Policies and regulations that may prevent social determinants of health from being addressed through the health care system
- The ways that provider and payer organizations are attempting to address them
Suicide Awareness & Prevention
After completing the Suicide Awareness & Prevention Learning Track, participants should understand:
- Current statistics on suicide in the general U.S. population: including among individuals living with serious mental illness and within Veteran populations
- Suicide risk factors and protective factors
- Treatment strategies to address suicide risk and rates, including screening
- The role health care providers can play in bereavement and postvention activities
- Best practices in media reporting on suicide
Telepsychiatry
After completing the Telepsychiatry Learning Track, participants should understand:
- Current challenges to mental health service access and the role that telepsychiatry may play to address them
- Ongoing policy changes impacting telepsychiatry’s adoption, implementation, and reimbursement
- Available options to deliver telepsychiatric, telemental health, and telehealth services
- Potential benefits and limitations related to the clinical practice of telepsychiatry
- The importance of consumer experience to telepsychiatric care
Value-Based Reimbursement
After completing the Value-Based Reimbursement Learning Track, participants should understand:
- The key drivers behind the shift toward more value-based care / reimbursement in mental health
- The role VBR can play in improving quality and lowering costs in the health care system
- Health plan perspectives on valuable provider partnerships under VBR models
- Adoption rates of a variety of VBR models throughout the health care and mental health systems