What began as a crowdfunding design challenge has produced a collaboration to deliver mental health services in a supermarket clinic. Family Practice and Counseling Network is adding behavioral health screenings to its treatment areas next month at its QCare clinic in a ShopRite store in North Philadelphia, according to a statement from the Network.
QCare customers will be screened in English and in Spanish through mounted tablets in the clinic waiting area. Participants can find out whether their mental health is consistent with a mental health disorder and receive an overview of the signs and symptoms of treatable mental health conditions. The clinic will provide treatment options including care from QCare staff. Although it is currently for people 18 and older, there are plans to add evaluations for children with a partner organization.
The entry was submitted by Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services and Screening for Mental Health. It was one of nine concepts selected from the design challenge, which was backed by the Scattergood Foundation and Drexel University School of Public Health.
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Although ready access to a mental health screening in a supermarket could do a lot to reduce the stigma some associate with mental health issues, it also raises the question of how effective it will be at ensuring participants get the care they need. Inadequate insurance coverage, among other things, has made it tough for patients to get this care.
Update Gregory Caplan is a grad student with Drexel University’s School of Public Health who also works as a project manager at the Scattergood Foundation, and helped initiate the design challenge. In response to emailed questions, he acknowledged some of the challenges of getting people the mental health resources they need in the current environment. There’s a large workforce shortage when it comes to mental health providers. Despite the Mental Health Parity Act, which has made mental health care coverage more manageable, enforcement of the act has been murky and inconsistent. For people without coverage on a low income, it becomes a matter of Medicaid expansion, and many states, including Pennsylvania, have declined to do it. Despite those factors, Caplan said he and the foundation remain optimistic that access to mental health professionals will improve.
