(Re)Visioning Veteran Recovery

The purpose of the Veterans Mental Health Summit is to bring together key stakeholders in the community, to share information and work collaboratively, to enhance access to mental health services, and to address the mental health care needs of veterans and families residing in the San Francisco area. This virtual, interactive summit will continue to thread the important dialogue we have inspired from past summits.

We are meeting this year at a time when many veterans continue to cope with challenging mental health conditions, exacerbated by socio-economic inequity and the ongoing social fragmentation and chronic stress associated with the pandemic. Although current evidence-based interventions can yield significant therapeutic benefits for many veterans coping with these challenges, there is an urgent need for treatment innovation and more effective, veteran-centric community collaboration to create the conditions for broader recovery and healing.

This notion of “(re)visioning” centers ancestral, cultural, and community pathways to care and acknowledges that “novel” methods often co-opt indigenous and ancestral approaches.

Our 10th Annual Veterans Mental Health Summit will feature sessions for providers and advocates, including indigenous/ancestral frameworks of healing and psychological well-being; psychedelic medicine, community as medicine, and whole health intervention approaches to mental health care.

As a principal outcome of the summit, participants will become familiar with the key clinical and conceptual points of the featured topics and introduced to some of the current thought leaders related to those topics. There will be opportunities for participant discussion, information sharing, and action planning.

Agenda:

• 12:30-12:40 PM: Mental Health Check-In: How are we right now?
• 12:40-12:50 PM: Welcome from Key Leadership
• 12:50-1:45 PM: Ancestral and Cultural Pathways to Care
• 2:00-2:55 PM: Psychedelic Medicine Approaches for Veteran Recovery
• 3:05-4:00 PM: Community as Medicine: Panel of peer experts
• 4:00-4:30 PM: Integrative/Whole Health Approaches to Manage Mental Health

Continuing education opportunities:

Four continuing education credits are available for some licensed professionals. More information will be emailed to registrants.

Questions?

Questions about CEUs? Contact Jason Thompson at Jason.Thompson3@va.gov.

For any other questions related to the Veterans Mental Health Summit, please contact policy@stp-sf.org.

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This event is sponsored by the San Francisco VA Health Care System and Swords to Plowshares.