Addressing Workforce Challenges Across the Behavioral Health Continuum of Care: Proceedings of a Workshop (2025)
Chapter: Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Areán concluded the workshop by reflecting on the discussions and emphasized the urgent need for actionable solutions to the behavioral health workforce shortage. She began by acknowledging the depth and breadth of the issues discussed throughout the workshop, noting that many of the challenges facing the workforce have been long-standing and yet require immediate attention. She said that it was time to “stop kicking the can down the road.” She added that workforce issues are a national priority and highlighted key ideas that emerged from the workshop sessions, including using technology to support care, developing staff tools, “de-siloing” care providers, organizing the behavioral health workforce, and redefining network adequacy.
Areán said she will take on the challenge of making NIMH more innovative and nimbler in studying best practices and providing information to the field that would be useful in improving mental health care. She exhorted the participants to not let this workshop be the end of the discussion but rather a renewing of interest in research to address these problems or study the impact of emerging solutions. She endorsed the idea of bringing together policy makers, think tanks, academics, and professional and consumer groups to identify an action plan for the next 5 years, so that the next time the National Academies convene a meeting on the mental health workforce, it will be to talk about “how we solved the problem and not why we still have the problem.”
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