SAMHSA Headlines—Your one-stop source for the latest from SAMHSA.
| While the holiday season can be stressful due to time pressure, relationship dynamics, travel, and other factors, the winter holidays during COVID-19 will involve their own set of unique challenges. To help address these issues, SAMHSA and other organizations have released resources about common effects of infectious disease outbreaks and coping effectively in a holiday season during or after a disaster.  SAMHSA is allowing flexibility for grant recipients affected by the loss of operational capacity and increased costs due to the COVID-19 crisis. These flexibilities are available during this emergency time period. Flexibility may be reassessed upon issuance of new guidance by the Office of Management and Budget post the emergency time period. Continue to check for updated information and resources to assist grant recipients during the COVID-19 emergency.
 Training and events are available for practitioners through SAMHSA’s Training and Technical Assistance Centers. Some of these are highlighted below. Visit SAMHSA’s Practitioner Training webpage for a more complete listing.
SAMHSA Headlines offers you a biweekly update of selected upcoming trainings and webinars. However, for a broader range of activities, visit this website, as well as the training sections of individual technical assistance center websites.
Selected events are highlighted below. Note that some of them require advance registration.
Note: If you are unable to access an event or webinar or have questions, please contact the source given at the individual event URL.
December 4, 2020 1:00 p.m., ET Substance Use Disorder (SUD) treatment and recovery providers have made great strides in virtualizing service delivery especially individual-based services. However, group counseling services, a mainstay in many SUD treatment and recovery support programs, has been more difficult to implement. This two-part webinar series will highlight online group counseling services and will demonstrate its viability as an alternative to traditional in-person groups requiring new facilitative, alliance building, and administrative skills for both counselors and peers.
Part II in this series will take place on December 11, 2020 1:00 p.m. ET.  Island populations are faced with a variety of challenges when preparing for, responding to, and recovering from a disaster. Providing assistance to these communities—including supplies, materials, and personnel—can be difficult and take more time to arrive. Additionally, these populations may differ in their values and culture, even when they are close in proximity. This issue of The Dialogue from the SAMHSA Disaster Technical Assistance Center focuses on programs delivered to island populations after a disaster.
People with mental or substance use disorders are at an increased risk of HIV in the form of high-risk drug use behaviors, particularly injection drug use, and high-risk sexual practices that frequently occur during intoxication and in the situation of untreated mental illness. Increasing capacity and service delivery to those with substance use disorder will result in increased screening, detection, and then linkage to those with HIV/AIDS in this high-risk population; treating substance use disorder and mental disorder is a form of HIV prevention. | These FAQs address general questions associated with award and management of SAMHSA discretionary grants that may arise in relation to COVID-19. This information does not apply to SABG, MHBG, PATH or PAIMI grants. Applicants and grant recipients are strongly encouraged to continue to check for updated information and resources. | Monday, December 7, 2020 9:00 a.m. ET This 6-week series for supervisors is designed to support you and help you support your staff by providing a place to discuss work issues and some practical ideas for building resilience and flourishing. Each session will include a brief overview on a flourishing topic, an interactive discussion of your challenging scenarios, and developing strategies for solving problems.
Other webinars in this series will take place at 9:00 a.m. ET on the following dates: - December 21, 2020
- January 4, 2021
- January 18, 2021
- February 1, 2021
- February 16, 2021
| Monday, December 7, 2020 2:00 p.m. ET This three-part series examines challenges that specific populations experience in response to COVID and other traumatic events. Part 1 focuses on transition-aged young adults (ages 16-24 years old). This webinar will discuss the challenges faced by this population, as well as resources that can help them reach a stable sense of self and confidence. The COVID webinars continue in January 2021. - Part 2 will focus on work with adults with serious mental illness and co-occurring disorders.
- Part 3 will address work with first responders.
| Monday, December 7, 2020 6:00 p.m. ET This webinar series is for school field leaders who are leading systems’ support for student suicide prevention. Session content will focus on providing timely, effective, competent, and evidence-based suicide prevention support to students and families. Each session will be contextualized with experience and suggestions from on-the-ground regional leadership.
Part 3 in this series, Setting the Stage: Collaboration and Risk Assessment, will take place on Monday, December 14, 2020 6:00 p.m. ET. | Tuesday, December 8, 2020 12:00 p.m. ET This three-hour live virtual training is intended for any provider in contact with LGBT individuals and includes an introduction to key terms and concepts (such as gender identity and sexual orientation), treatment considerations for clinical work, and addressing the specific needs of LGBT individuals. | Tuesday, December 8, 2020 11:00 a.m. ET The Prevention Fundamentals training provides an overview of the key concepts in substance use and misuse prevention. Participants will be introduced to concepts of the public health approach to prevention, the continuum of care, and the role of coalitions and providers in community-based prevention efforts. These concepts will be referenced as the participants are introduced to the Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF).
Training 2 in this series, SPF: Assessment, Planning and Evaluation for the Prevention Professional, will take place on Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 11 a.m. ET. | Tuesday, December 8, 2020 2:30 p.m. ET This webinar mini-series will provide real-life examples of ways to adapt quantitative and qualitative data collection methods during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the webinar series, participants will have the opportunity to discuss barriers, solutions, and lessons learned related to data collection during this critical time.
Part II of this mini-series will take place on January 6, 2021 at 2:30 p.m. ET. | Wednesday, December 9, 11:00 a.m. ET This session is designed to improve prevention professionals’ cultural competency and ability to communicate with low-income communities of color (particularly urban, African-American communities), to provide them with behavioral health information in a way that is effective and culturally relevant. | Wednesday, December 9, 2020 12:30 p.m. ET The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a seismic shift in how practitioners provide services. With the sudden shift to virtual services, school-based mental health professionals have been required to learn new ways of doing their essential work, but with little guidance about how to make those sessions work. This session will focus on the pragmatic questions of how to do these services with practical suggestions about what helps and what interferes with client engagement, how to prevent problems, and how to manage when challenges arise. | Wednesday, December 9, 2020 12:00 p.m. ET This second course in this series will review basics of neurochemistry as it applies to cocaine and methamphetamine. It will also include the acute and chronic effects of stimulants. Cognitive and memory effects will also be discussed.
Course 3, Effective Treatment Approaches and Recovery Supports, will take place on Wednesday, December 16, 2020 12:00 p.m. ET. | Wednesday, December 10, 2020 12:00 p.m. ET The purpose of this full-day training is to provide participants with a detailed overview of medications that have been shown to be effective as a component of the treatment of alcohol and opioid use disorders. Topics will include: - The context for medication-assisted treatment (positive and negative perceptions)
- The epidemiology of alcohol and opioid use and dependence (user demographics)
- A review of the various classes of opioids
- An overview of each medication, its indication, to whom it is administered, and how it works
- Treatment settings for medication-assisted treatment
| Thursday, December 10, 2020 2:00 p.m. ET In this presentation, you will learn prevention, intervention, and treatment strategies to help break intergenerational patterns of addiction, trauma, dark secrets, and drug-related fatalities. We will discuss the roles of prevention specialists, therapists, providers, trauma specialists, persons in recovery, families, and entire communities in breaking these patterns. Other topics include: - Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder as a risk factor
- How to create a healing forest to help break intergenerational patterns
- A discussion of the entire community as the prevention and recovery center
| Thursday, December 10, 2020 2:00 p.m. ET Older adult patients with multiple prescriptions, from multiple prescribers, can add a layer of complexity to the practice of dentistry. This webinar will make dentists aware of the challenges with polypharmacy in elderly patients, as well as potential side effects and interactions of the most commonly used medications and opioids. | Thursday, December 10, 2020 2:30 p.m. ET There are multiple interacting personal and social factors that may influence youth gang involvement that include social status, peer influence, economic advantage, and impulse satisfaction relative to risk taking behaviors. Prevention strategies for reducing Hispanic and Latino youth gang involvement and membership must contain multiple levels of involvement that include individual, familial, community, school, and peer-based approaches. | Monday, December 14, 2020 and Wednesday, December 16, 2020 at 4:00 p.m. ET To prescribe buprenorphine, one of three medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of opioid use disorder, physicians are required to complete 8 hours of training in order to apply to the Drug Enforcement Agency for a waiver. | Tuesday, December 15, 2020 2:00 p.m. ET In this free webinar, participants will learn an approach to conduct proper screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment for young adults (ages 18-25) at risk for substance use disorders. They will then hear about key behavioral and pharmacologic treatments for youth with substance use disorders including motivational interviewing, cognitive-behavioral therapy, contingency management, and medications for alcohol and opioid use disorders. | Tuesday, December 15, 2020 1:00 p.m. ET This discussion is designed to promote interactivity through an informal "round table" conversation. Attendees will be given the opportunity to speak directly with the presenter to ask questions and discuss issues. | Beginning Wednesday, December 16, 2020 11:00 a.m. ET, and continuing the third Wednesday of each month This is a series of interactive calls via Zoom for people who want to enhance their Motivational Interviewing skills. This learning opportunity provides practitioners with a no-cost, easy-to-access opportunity to continue to build their practice skills towards fidelity. | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 10:00 a.m. ET This is part of an important effort to assist the mental health workforce in better recognizing and responding to multicultural issues for people with severe mental illnesses. | Wednesday, December 16, 2020 12:30 p.m. ET Unconscious Bias for Healthcare and Mental Health Professionals is the first session of the larger series Delivering Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Care in a Community Mental Health Setting. The goal of this series is to enhance treatment through meaningful therapeutic services via interpretation including how to be culturally appropriate with an emphasis on ethical considerations. Other webinars in this series include: - Session 2, Delivering Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Care through an Interpreter, will take place on Wednesday, January 6, 2020 12:30 p.m. ET.
- Session 3, Providing Supportive Mental Health Services to Refugee and Immigrant Communities, takes place on Wednesday, January 13, 2020 12:30 p.m. ET.
| Thursday, December 17, 2020 3:00 p.m. ET This talk will review the evidence of mobile health apps to meet clinical and wellness goals for people with serious mental illness (SMI). To illustrate real world examples, the talk will focus on a case with the goal of offering case based learning from a study that explored the feasibility of integrating depression self-management smartphone apps into primary care for an underserved patient population. | Thursday, December 17, 2020 6:00 p.m. ET For people who are grieving, holidays can often be times of immense sadness. This webinar will present several activities designed to help people who are grieving reframe the holiday season into a time of celebration for the life of a loved one rather than a time of mourning for the loss of that loved one. The activities presented will be applicable to secular holidays as well as the holidays celebrated within Christian, Jewish, and Islamic faith traditions. | This edition of the Supplemental Research Bulletin reviews research on how women experience disasters. In addition to women in general, research provides insight on the experience of pregnant women and older women. | | We appreciate your feedback! Please send your questions, comments, and suggestions to the SAMHSA Headlines Team. You can call us at 1-877-SAMHSA-7, or email us at SAMHSAHeadlines@samhsa.hhs.gov. We look forward to hearing from you. You are receiving this message because of your existing relationship with SAMHSA email updates. If you no longer wish to receive SAMHSA Headlines, go to "Update My Profile" and check the box under "Check to Delete" for SAMHSA Headlines and submit. For further assistance, please contact samhsainfo@samhsa.hhs.gov. Was this email forwarded to you? To receive future SAMHSA Headlines directly from SAMHSA, subscribe. | |
