Penobscot Bay Medical Center has partnered with Mid-Coast Mental Health Center and the Penobscot Bay YMCA and received a federal grant to provide mental health and substance use treatment for youth and their families. The resulting project, titled the Midcoast Integrated Health Collaborative (MIHC), was designed to make assessments, diagnosis and treatment readily available through the offices of pediatrician and family practices and in other venues such as the YMCA.

This collaborative project provides an opportunity to increase services to adolescents at risk for substance use and abuse, as well as to address the need for quick access to mental health and psychiatric services for youth.

The three partners engaged in the Midcoast Mental Health Integrated Care Project initially collaborated with five pediatrician practices to provide behavioral health services. Supporting collaborators include Maine State Department of Health and Human Services, Camden Hills Regional High School, Knox County Community Health Coalition, law enforcement and area clergy. Mid-coast Mental Health Center merged with PBH in 2006 to become the newest member of Pen Bay Healthcare's family of services. Currently they coordinate all administrative and clinical aspects of the MIHC project.

In Maine, there is an estimated 42,000 mentally and emotionally ill children who face a mental health care system that is inadequate to meet their needs. A disturbing indicator of the depth of the child/adolescent mental health issue in our area has been a rash of youth suicides over the past 5 years.

The intent of the project is to address, through the delivery of behavioral health services that are integrated with both primary care and the commonly visited local YMCA, mental health issues that might otherwise go unnoticed and untreated. The region served by the Project encompasses Knox County and portions of Lincoln and Waldo Counties, an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 people. The primary care physicians who will participate in the program have offices in Rockport and Rockland; together, they serve close to 30,000 patients a year. A minimum of 3,000 of these (10 percent), or 300 per doctor, will suffer from diagnosable mental disorders. Of these numbers, the population for the program is:

• Youth ages five to 20 with particular emphasis on adolescents age 12 to 18;
• Adults from low- and moderate-income households (household income of 80% County median);
• Families living in rural communities; and single parent households.

Because the vast majority of patients in primary care have either a physical ailment that is affected by stress, problems maintaining healthy lifestyles or a psychological disorder, it is clinically effective and cost effective to make behavioral health providers part of primary medical care. To make sure people who need care can access it free from fear and stigma, care is provided in non-threatening and/or familiar locales, hence the engagement of the local YMCA and schools. Truly integrated care programs allow patients to feel that for any problem they bring, they have come to the right place.

Updated: 8/11/07