Behavioral Health Laboratory

VISN 4 MIRECC >> Behavioral Health Laboratory (BHL)

Overview

The Behavioral Health Laboratory (BHL) is a flexible and dynamic clinical service designed to help manage the needs of Veterans seen in primary care. The BHL includes an initial triage assessment that provides primary care providers with a comprehensive assessment of Veterans' mental health and substance abuse (MH/SA) symptoms. Based on the results of the initial assessment, the BHL service also includes structured follow-up assessments, care management for depression, anxiety, and alcohol misuse, or specialty MH/SA referral as appropriate. Thus the system serves as a platform for care focused on veteran identification, triage, decision support, and management and tracking.

There were several principles used in designing the program:

Cross-cutting:

The program provides support for depression, alcohol and anxiety problems. Within each disorder, the program addresses a broad spectrum of severity, from watchful waiting for subsyndromal symptoms to care management for mild to moderate symptoms to referral management for the most complex or severely affected individuals.

Targeted interventions:

The program provides assessment, monitoring, early intervention, care management for depression, anxiety and alcohol misuse, and referral management; thus, the program can be tailored by each center to their available resources.

Flexible:

The program allows for multiple methods of case finding (screening, direct referral, pharmacy-based referrals for new antidepressants, Veterans self-referral, etc).

Preference/Resource-based:

The program can target individual Veterans for specific programs or research projects. The decision support can also be tailored to account for primary care provider or clinic preferences.

Multi-modal:

Assessments can be conducted either by telephone or face-to-face. The program can also be based at individual clinics or medical centers, or at central settings such as regional or VISN level centers.

National MIRECC | VISN 4 | Philadelphia VAMC | Pittsburgh VAMC