Changing how people perceive and receive mental health services is not an easy task.

The stigma associated with mental illness remains a difficult barrier for many.

But we speak with a psychologist who is making mental health services, trainings, and screenings, more accessible to people in one city.

He hopes other cities and towns will follow his lead.

I'm Audrey Hamilton, and this is Speaking of Psychology.

Music I'm Audrey Hamilton and this is Speaking of Psychology.

Arthur Evans is the Commissioner of Philadelphia's Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services.

A clinical and community psychologist, Dr. Evans focuses his work on improving treatment options for people suffering from addiction and other mental illnesses. Welcome, Dr. Evans. Thank you. I'm glad

to be here. One of your major initiatives with the City of Philadelphia is to change how people

perceive and receive community mental health services.

Can you tell us about some of the ways you're doing that?

Sure. I think it's one of the most important things that we can do right now as a field.

The country is really dealing with the issue of mental health, how do people access services, how do people get what they need. One of the things

that we realize and recognize is that people have very strong views about mental illness. There

are stigma around that, and we feel strongly that if we're really going to help people, we not

only need to make sure that the services are there, but people are actually going to reach out for those services. So we're using a variety of methods to do that.

Can you give us an example as how you're doing that? Sure. So one of them that we recently just

did implement it was to implement a mental health screening kiosk in a retail pharmacy. So what does that mean? That means that

next to the blood pressure cuff at your local pharmacy, you will be able to take a mental health

screening. And it takes about five minutes at the most. It gives you information and feedback on

whether or not you are likely to have a mental health

condition it's not to diagnose it's not to give you a diagnosis or that kind of thing but it's to say

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