AMHA-USA Supports the Healthy Future of Mental Health Practice

Since 1996, AMHA member mental health professionals have pooled resources, built community, and shared expertise; taking action to support high standards of care:

By building professional community. Nurturing long-term relationships among professionals allows clinicians to help each other better support their clients and their solo and small group practices. Professionals refer to colleagues they know and respect.

By creating networks of consultation groups. Individual clinicians and their clients benefit from the existence of professional consultation groups. With HIPAA-secure Forum technology AMHA maintains consultation groups and their inter-connection.

By investment in marketing and marketing projects that connect people to private practice therapists. Individual practitioners alone cannot compete with the marketing budgets of payer-created networks or large tech companies. AMHA members pool their resources and collectively fund creative marketing campaigns that reach new clients. This way they reach a wider network of clients than an individual clinician can and help clients connect with local private practice therapists who meet their needs.

By involving interns & residents, AMHA Grows community. New therapists need support to learn how to run their own practices. Interns and Residents join AMHA and have the use of leading-edge practice technology at a very low monthly fee.

AMHA reaches out to local universities and graduate students, and offer information about AMHA values to professionals who supervise. When students graduate, they will know that there are solid strategies and technology that can protect private practice. They can choose to open their own AMHA member private practice or join an AMHA-affiliated group practice.

By creating strategies that support solo and small group practices AMHA helps therapists uphold high standards of private practice while participating in their professional community as individuals or collaborative groups.

By challenging threats to high quality mental health services. When the Mission of AMHA was defined in the 1990’s, the threats to quality, privacy and value of behavioral and mental health services came from managed care organizations which limited services and invaded patient-therapist relationships in their pursuit of profit. Current threats to the quality, privacy and value of behavioral and mental health services are equally or more insidious, and also in search of profit.

By encouraging mental health professionals to become advocates for improved laws related to insurance rules and mental health needs. Legislators need to hear many concerned professional voices to move toward license reciprocity, expanded access to outpatient mental health services, improved services for behavioral health problems; and to meet the underserved needs of the severely and persistently mentally ill.