Charlotte Torgerson, 5, poses in the Play Room during the opening of UNLV’s PRACTICE mental health satellite clinic Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022. Christina Saliba, a research assistant, is at left.
Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022 | 2 a.m.
When Dr. Michelle Paul arrived in Nevada as a psychologist in 1997, she was given an identification number: 374.
She was only the 374th psychologist in a state that ranked near the bottom in mental health care, and although the number of mental health professionals has grown, Nevada is still “completely underserved in regard to (its) mental health workforce,” she said.
The Nevada Board of Psychological Examiners lists 1,932 licensed psychologists serving the state’s 3 million residents, which is significantly below the national average of 31 psychologists per every 100,000 residents, according to the American Psychological Association.
Paul is trying to alter that narrative. Ten years ago, she established the UNLV Partnership for Research, Assessment, Counseling, Therapy and Innovative Clinical Education (PRACTICE) program.
Created as a joint venture between UNLV’s Liberal Arts and Education colleges, the UNLV PRACTICE provides faculty and students an “interdisciplinary space” to learn and conduct research related to community mental health.
Paul said graduate and doctoral students from various psychology programs are often “siloed up in (their) health care systems,” but she wanted to create a place where students could gain various types of hands-on experience while interacting with differing perspectives on patient care.
“We’ve been able to demonstrate that it is doable to bring different groups together to work together, and when we each bring our unique contributions ... the patient or the client is going to benefit,” Paul said. “No one profession can do it all, and so we can really build an effective team all in service of good care for our clients.”
The program staged an open house Wednesday to commemorate 10 years of serving Southern Nevadans, and more importantly, to welcome to its newest satellite campus in the Las Vegas Medical District on Rancho Drive near downtown.
“As we come out of the pandemic, we have to be more conscious of the mental health challenges for our students, for our kids, for our faculty, for our staff … everybody,” UNLV President Keith Whitfield said at the event. “It has to be something that we are paying attention to, so the foundation that the practice has created is something that’s just incredible.”
The program’s main clinic is based out of UNLV’s main campus on Maryland Parkway and has served roughly 4,000 children and adults within the past decade, Paul said in her remarks to the public. It has also been the training ground for around 500 graduate students across all disciplines.
For those like Michael Fensken, a third-year clinical psychology doctoral student, the practice’s newest satellite location presented him with the “unique opportunity” to work specifically with children — an endeavor that Paul intends to expand on more within the next 10 years.
Fensken works with school-reluctant children and addresses school-related anxieties, typically seeing anywhere from eight to 10 patients. Although he has the option to change his specialization or the age group he works with, Fensken said he enjoys working with kids and sees himself staying with his current group as he completes his doctorate.
The program also provides “low-cost, quality behavioral, cognitive and mental health services to the community,” according to the UNLV website. One session could cost as low as $5, Paul said.
They even help with removing other barriers that may prevent patients seeking help, such as assisting with transportation costs and accessibility, said Dr. Roberta Miranda, a clinical supervisor and youth coordinator.
“It’s already stressful (when) needing to seek services, (so) let’s get it as stress-free as possible,” Paul said.
As Paul looks forward to the next 10 years, she hopes the practice will continue to tackle Nevada’s lack of mental health resources by providing “increased access to care today while helping to build the next-generation workforce for tomorrow.” The newest clinic will help with that, along with some of its upcoming projects.
In the upcoming months, the program is partnering with the Boys & Girls Club of Southern Nevada to bring a “multitiered system of support” programs that will be implemented into their system.
Staff at the Boys & Girls Club will learn specific skills in stress coping, how to be trauma informed, and how to work with kids, Paul said. A subset of those staff will then be taught how to support children that may need “that next level of care,” she said.
This initiative is in addition to the program’s two newest programs: one that will address bipolar disorders in children and young adults, and one to support youth substance abuse. Both of these groups are being funded through federal grants that were awarded to the program this year.
But Paul does not want to stop there. Within the next decade, she eventually — with the support of UNLV — wants the practice to expand into local schools to help bring more psychological support into the K-12 space.
