International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience
Open Access

Abstract

Traumatic injuries affect people of all ages, genders and races. Trauma care and trauma systems continue to improve, but most of this progress has occurred in pre-hospital and acute care settings. Mental health needs (e.g., posttraumatic stress, depression), which affect more than 20% of patients who experience traumatic injury, continue to be poorly identified and treated after discharge. We recently launched the Trauma Resilience and Recovery Program (TRRP) to address this need at our Level 1 Trauma Center at the Medical University of South Carolina. TRRP is a new 4-step service that we believe has tremendous potential to serve as a cost-efficient, scalable, and sustainable model of care. It represents collaboration between leaders in Psychiatry, Trauma Surgery, Pediatrics, Nursing, and Tele-health. Our four-step process includes: In-hospital education; 30-day mental health telephone screening; comprehensive mental health assessment and delivery of best-practice treatment for PTSD or depression. Tele-health technology is offered at steps 3 and 4 to address barriers to accessing face-to-face services. This presentation will outline the structure of our service, data describing successes and challenges in our first year of operation and results of three pilot studies that we completed with adults and adolescents after traumatic injury. The pilot studies addressed the prevalence and risk factors associated with mental health recovery as well as a novel text messaging program to assist in self-monitoring emotional recovery. In our first 3 months since launching the program, we have served approximately 150 patients through the program.

Biography

Kenneth J Ruggiero has completed his PhD at West Virginia University and has served on the Faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina since 2003. He is a Professor of Nursing and Psychiatry and Co-Director of the Technology Applications Center for Healthful Lifestyles. He has led as Principal Investigator for 4 grants funded by the National Institutes of Health and 7 other grants funded by the Department of Homeland Security and Veterans Administration. He has more than 140 scholarly publications. He serves as an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Traumatic Stress, Journal of Interpersonal Violence and Journal of Anxiety Disorders.

Email: ruggierk@musc.edu