The recently renamed “Minnesota Mental Health Community Foundation” has been in development since 2006. MPS members saw the need to support outreach activities with a permanent structure, so they worked with leadership and staff to form the Minnesota Psychiatric Information and Outreach Foundation in 2010. Since its inception, the foundation has strived to offer a community-wide infrastructure to support collaboration and innovation with projects that bring together disciplines, approaches and volunteers working together to impact mental health care in Minnesota. The original board included representation from psychiatry, nursing, social work and community volunteers. Today the foundation and its board offer leadership and support for the whole mental health community and we are actively working to expand the board to represent a cross-section of Minnesota’s mental health community.
The Mission of the Minnesota Mental Health Community Foundation is to support and promote access outreach and education about Mental Health treatment and systems of care. 
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2020 Eric Brown Residents Caucus Scholarship Winner A. Irem Sonmez reflects
Dr. Sonmez studied connections between her interests in psychoanalysis and neuromodulation. Eric Brown Scholarship allowed me to explore psychotherapy courses from the International Psychotherapy Institute. Courses were offered by prominent leaders of the topic internationally and I am grateful for this opportunity.
As a neuromodulation researcher, I noted some thoughts about the differences and similarities of psychotherapy and neuromodulation. One mutual characteristic is that they are both therapeutic because our brains are plastic. They respond to the environment. The goal in both therapies is to break previously formed and chronically not healthy networks or ways of thinking and form new ones. One major difference is while engagement is a very important factor defining the effectiveness of psychotherapy, it is not a requirement for neuromodulation. I also believe that because engagement is not necessary, neuromodulation is an appealing alternative treatment for many individuals. For example, they do not need to put any effort other than sitting in the TMS chair and allowing the changing magnetic field to do its magic. It is known that empathy and feelings of being cared for are nonspecific factors that contribute to improvement in therapy. This concept may also extend to the world of neuromodulation. Patients who feel protected and cared for by clinic staff, with whom the individual interacts daily for weeks, may be more likely to benefit from the treatment. The design of neuromodulation treatment course involves more human interaction, although not as deep as the interaction during a therapy session. I also thought that daily check in rituals in a neuromodulation clinic may also increase the self-reflective capacity. Lastly, I learned that a psychotherapist would select a guiding theory for his or her clients at the beginning of their therapeutic alliance. For such a promising and rapidly expanding field, neuromodulation apparently has limited theory guiding in its development. A theory may support progress and guide development. As a researcher these courses inspired me to look into applying object relations theory and subjecting the theory’s application to neuromodulation to empirical scrutiny. Lyuba Megits, MD, 2019 Eric Brown Residents Caucus Scholarship Winner reflects on her experience
Thank you for your generous support. The Eric Brown Scholarship I received last year served as a very valuable resource to further my exploration in the field of psychoanalysis. As a psychiatrist, I found it very important to look and think more deeply into how the unconscious or unknown processes of our mind develop. With your support and that of my program director at the UofM, I was able to spend half a day per week throughout the last academic year of residency pursuing the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program (PPTP) through Minnesota Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (MPSI). This training allowed me to hone my therapy skills and apply them to my clinical work. Today, I am well poised to offer excellent patient care in the community. I am glad to be part of the MPS community having experienced first-hand the excellent assistance you provide to emerging psychiatrists with all the varied interests that we bring to the table.
In gratitude, Lyuba Megits, MD |
Yee Xiong, MD, Awarded 2019 Bob Baumer Scholarship
Yee Xiong, MD, described her interest in the scholarship and the opportunities it offers, “As the second Hmong psychiatrist in the state of Minnesota, I stand at the forefront of tackling mental health disparities in the Hmong community. The Hmong community encounters a complex interplay of disproportionately high prevalence of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and suicide in the setting of ongoing social marginalization, chemical use adaptation, and a unique social determinant of mental health. I hope to become a psychiatrist whose services are extended beyond community mental health centers/hospitals into the locus of care for the seriously mentally ill: the community itself. By using the clan organization and complementary and alternative health modalities as stepping stones to shared decision-making and evidence-based care, my approach to community psychiatry can become tools for prevention, treatment, action, and support to promote good mental health for the Hmong community and the neighboring communities that mental illness and its stigma transmit to.” Dr. Xiong will also pursue APA scholar opportunities in New York City
