Hey guys it’s Callie and Kayla with Billings365...

Today we want to talk to you about our newest partnership with Billings Clinic. The goal of this collaboration is to spread the message about their efforts to bring a psychiatric residency program to Billings Clinic. The program, called Montana Track, will focus on making mental health resources available to underserved rural communities.

Montana, Wyoming and Alaska are the only states in the country with no psychiatric residency program, and they’re also consistently among the national leaders in suicide rates.

So many individuals across our state struggle with mental illness and many have difficulty accessing care because of the great travel distances to receive care, stigma surrounding mental health and the lack of psychiatrists in our region. Mental illness is the leading cause of disability in the United States. Billings Clinic Psychiatric Services goal is to provide innovative treatments for patients and to be a leading edge organization where  mental health professionals desire to work and care for their patients.

The reason this Psychiatric Residency program is so important is because our state does not have nearly enough psychiatrists needed to meet all the needs of our population. This has a lot to do with the fact that medical residents tend to stay in the state they trained in. This makes it incredibly hard for Montana to recruit psychiatrists without a residency program.

Mental health affects everyone. It impacts all of us whether it’s a personal struggle with mental illness, a friend, family member or a coworker that struggles. This isn’t a separate group of people. It’s us. It’s all of us. 

So we have to take care of each other by improving mental health care access with this residency program.

Help us in supporting Billings Clinic and the Montana Track psychiatric residency program by simply liking this post, sharing it with your friends or commenting below in an act of support towards this cause so we can all come together in this time of need to lessen the stigma and expand the access to mental health care across the region.

Learn More about Montana Track

To support greater access to mental health care, you can visit BillingsClinicFoundation.com