The University of Washington's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences will lead the largest clinical trial ever involving rural Americans with a psychiatric disorder.
One thousand primary-care patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), bipolar disorder or both will be recruited from 15 Federally Qualified Health Centers in three states (Arkansas, Michigan and Washington) to study how best to treat these complex mental health conditions in rural areas.
Rural health centers face substantial challenges to care for such patients – namely the lack of mental-health specialists. More than half of the counties in Washington have no practicing psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker – a situation that, as recently as 2007, was mirrored in counties nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
[For more of this story, written by Rebecca Lynn Sladek, go to http://hsnewsbeat.uw.edu/story...ntal-health-rural-us]
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