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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Dr. A. Irem Sonmez is the 2020 Eric Brown Residents Caucus Scholarship Winner
Until starting residency, Dr. A. Irem Sonmez had been working as a research fellow at Mayo Clinic. Her research focuses on bridging mind and imaging technology. She has gained knowledge and experience in science and technology of current imaging techniques. However, she is very much interested in applying this knowledge beyond mood disorders. There is a lot to learn from brain states and personality traits. There may be foundational differences as to how human brain looks depending on their relationship with their outer world. To push her limits and move out of her comfort zone, she intends to pursue a psychoanalysis course online. Psychoanalysis will teach her a completely different way of approaching her quest to understand human behavior. Psychoanalysis requires active participation of the patient whereas current neuromodulation therapies do not necessitate active engagement.
Dr. Sonmez plans to study connections between her interests in psychoanalysis and neuromodulation. The International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) presents national certificate training programs that bring mental health professionals and institute faculty together to study with international contributors at the leading edge of the field, such as Otto Kernberg, Virginia Ungar, and Jill and David Scharff. IPI offers quality programming in a variety of formats – short courses, multi-year training programs in theory and technique, and advanced clinical training. They offer online webinar series titled "Foundations of Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy Videoconference: Special Topics in Couple Therapy: Theory, Technique & Practice". They offer 7 webinars this Fall 2020 and 8 webinars Spring 2021. Dr. Sonmez will use the scholarship to attend 4 foundational sessions. It will be fascinating to compare different approaches of psychoanalysis and neuromodulation. 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
