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Engaging Community
Public Education and Training
DBHIDS is dedicated to promoting healthy behaviors and healthy communities through education and awareness-building strategies. DBHIDS has developed a variety of comprehensive and easily accessible online resources and trainings to strengthen awareness of behavioral health tools, services and support available for individuals and families.
Healthy Minds Philly
A virtual resource designed to provide awareness and education on behavioral health issues and to offer helpful information, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Healthy Minds Philly is home to:
- Behavioral Health Screenings: Quick, free and anonymous online screenings to learn whether you or someone you care about might be experiencing symptoms of behavioral health disorder.
- Mental Health First Aid (MHFA): A public education program that teaches the skills needed to identify, understand, and respond to signs of behavioral health challenges or crises. First Aid is given until appropriate supports are received.
- National Depression Screening Day: You keep tabs on your blood pressure, weight, and cholesterol. Why not your emotional well-being? We all could use a check-up from the neck up! That’s why we bring mental health screenings to the community.
- Mind Your Holidays: As the holidays approach, we know that it could be a difficult time for some people. From the loss of a loved one to the loss of a job, celebrating the beauty of the holidays might not be as easy for some as it is for others.
Additional resources
Behavioral Health Training and Education Network
Designed to support DBHIDS and other human services systems by planning, coordinating, and providing quality learning experiences in Behavioral Health for the entire system, including individuals and their family members, DBHIDS staff members and staff of other service provider organizations.
DBHIDS Community-based Services Development Unit
The Community-Based Services Development Unit oversees the development and implementation of innovative community-based partnerships and strategies to help people in recovery positively integrate into their communities. Through a public health approach CBSD conducts an array outreach and engagement community building activities designed to bring awareness to the importance of emotional wellness. In addition to these activities the Unit creates initiatives designed to reach individuals who may disproportionately access services and taskforces to ensure services provided are person-first oriented (culturally competent).
Prevention and Early Detection
DBHIDS understands the earlier we intervene with behavioral health issues, the faster we are able to provide professional care as a community. This requires paying attention to social determinants of health, which include the availability of support, experiences of trauma, access to behavioral health care, educational and economic opportunities, and the social and physical environment. We do this by partnering with city agencies including the criminal justice, housing, school, and child welfare systems, as well as the behavioral health treatment system and the general public.
- Community Response Teams
Community Response Teams provide community support and crisis response services to communities affected by disasters, violence, or other events which require emotional support and psychoeducation as part of coordinated response effort. - Crisis Intervention Team Training
The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) is a collaboration between DBHIDS staff, the Philadelphia Police Department, and other stakeholders designed to reduce conflict during encounters between police and community members with mental health challenges. CIT training emphasizes the principles of violence prevention, de-escalation and community collaboration. - Infant Toddler Early Intervention Program
The Philadelphia Infant Toddler Early Intervention Program is an entitlement program for infants and toddlers between the ages of birth to 3 years of age who are eligible. Anyone can make a referral to Early Intervention and all referred children will receive a developmental assessment and many will also receive a multidisciplinary evaluation. All children eligible will be assigned a service coordinator and all Early Intervention Services are delivered at no cost to the family.
Innovative Treatment Services
DBHIDS recognizes that effective and innovative practices are essential components of a resilience- and recovery-oriented behavioral health system. DBHIDS is committed to ensuring efficient, sustainable, “state-of-the-art” treatments are a part of the array of services and supports available to individuals who need them.
- The Philadelphia Alliance for Child Trauma Services
A network of child serving systems and organizations that provides the most effective practices for traumatized youth and their families aimed to increase the number of children who receive the most effective trauma-focused and trauma informed care in Philadelphia. - Evidence-based Practice and Innovation Center (EPIC)
DBHIDS’ Evidence-based Practice and Innovation Center, or EPIC, seeks to advance system-wide efforts to help support the implementation, sustainability and accessibility of behavioral health Evidence-based Practices in Philadelphia.
