Dear Primary Care Clinician:

Primary care clinicians are finding themselves taking on more youth mental health care without having systems and supports to optimally provide care. The US Preventative Services Task Force has recommended routine screening of adolescents for depression, IF systems are in place to assess and follow up on the findings. In Vermont and New Hampshire, through AHRQ funding, the Teen Mental Health Project is offering practices the training and supports to enhance the quality of care for this population.

Six pediatric and family medicine practices are currently participating in the project and are screening all adolescents at routine health visits for depression. As expected, previously unrecognized teens with depression risk and diagnoses are now being identified. We are currently recruiting the second round of practices in our region. You are receiving this letter of invite as a result of your prior interest in joining the effort to bring depression screening for teens into your practice as a standard of care.

You are invited to join the next set of practices to receive the support and resources to get it going in your practice as well.

If your practice participates, the project team provides your practice with an integrated office system to enhance depression screening, care and follow-up. Unique features included are education resources, policies, protocols, trainings, education and consultation from Dr. Smiga of Psychiatry at Dartmouth, a mental health referral database, training and ongoing support for your nurses to provide phone follow-up in monitoring progress when patients screen positive, and a web-based patient tracking registry. In summary, everything that you might want/need to develop the capacity and capability for identifying and treating adolescent depression in the primary care setting.

Practice enrollment is for a limited time through August for this round of practices. Trainings begin in September/October. If you are interested in participating in this initiative now or in the spring of 2012, please visit our web site to learn the specifics required of participating practices: http://www.dartmouthcoopproject.org/TeenMental.

If you want to talk to us to participate or just learn more about the project, please call Debbie Johnson at 603-653-3440 or e-mail to: Deborah.J.Johnson@Dartmouth.EDU as soon as possible.

Ardis Olson MD
Principal Investigator and Project Director
Teen Mental Health Project
Dartmouth Medical School