Angela M. Tate currently serves as the Vice President of Operations. She has been with Behavioral Health Response since 2007. Angela has a BA in Psychology from Maryville University – St. Louis and a MEd in Counseling from University of Missouri St. Louis. She is also a licensed professional counselor (LPC) in the State of Missouri. Angela is an accomplished trainer and is certified as a Youth Mental Health First Aid trainer and an Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) trainer. She chairs the Program Committee on Paraquad’s Board of Directors, serves on the Executive Committee in addition to serving on Great Circle’s Regional Council – Eastern Region.

Presentation(s):

TEAMwork makes the Dream Work: Building a High Performing Leadership Team

Dr. Heaps-Woodruff is a research neuropsychologist and mental health services researcher with expertise in disease and mental illness comorbidities. The majority of her work has been focused on HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders and aging research using novel methods to identify risk to develop cognitive impairment, treatment effects, and predict health outcomes using cognitive measures and neuroimaging tools. Her current work has been focused on evaluation of service delivery improvement for individuals with SMI and comorbid chronic illness in the Missouri Medicaid population.

Presentation(s):

Understanding the Impact of Chronic Health Conditions on Cognitive Function and Recovery

Kelsey Prather, Youth Suicide Prevention Specialist at Tri-County Mental Health, has a Bachelor of Science in family studies and human services, with a minor in conflict analysis and trauma studies. Her background and passion is in working with youth, raising mental health awareness, as well as implementing suicide prevention for youth, parents, adults, school staff, and community members.

Presentation(s):

Preventing Youth Suicide in Missouri: Effectiveness of a Hospital, School and Community Mental Health Center Collaboration in Kansas City

Kirsti Millar is the Suicide Prevention Liaison at ReDiscover where she coordinates the Show Me Zero Youth Suicide Grant which serves clients ages 10-24. She has dynamic experience in crisis work and has utilized her creativity in program expansion and client engagement at ReDiscover for three years. She has five years in the field working with both adults and youth alike in therapeutic, case management and crisis like settings. She completed her master’s degree in counseling from Missouri State University with an emphasis in Play Therapy. Kirsti enjoys working with youth and has a passion for community engagement. Kirsti has extensive training across multiple modalities including: motivational interviewing, positive youth development, harm reduction, assessing and managing suicide risk, trauma informed care, vicarious trauma, EMDR and play therapy.

Presentation(s):

Preventing Youth Suicide in Missouri: Effectiveness of a Hospital, School and Community Mental Health Center Collaboration in Kansas City

Stacey Williams is the State Suicide Prevention Coordinator for the Missouri Department of Mental Health (DMH). She serves as the Project Director for the Show Me Zero Youth Suicide Prevention Grant and is the suicide prevention expert for DMH. Stacey has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a Master of Social Work degree, with an emphasis in Policy, Planning and Administration from the University of Missouri.  She is a Licensed Master level Social Worker and one of two nationally certified Advanced Level WRAP® Facilitator’s in the state of Missouri. Stacey has over ten years’ experience working in the mental health field. She brings forth experience in state government, residential settings and community mental health settings as well as experience in both policy and clinical practice. Stacey is passionate about prevention and recovery as well as helping people through the process of bringing about systems change.

Presentation(s):

Preventing Youth Suicide in Missouri: Effectiveness of a Hospital, School and Community Mental Health Center Collaboration in Kansas City

Elizabeth Sale, Ph.D is the Director of Evaluation and a research associate professor at the Missouri Institute of Mental Health at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. Dr. Sale has over twenty-five years of experience in evaluation with specific expertise in suicide and substance use prevention.   She has been the lead evaluator for four Garrett Lee Smith (GLS) Youth Suicide Prevention Initiatives and has researched the effectiveness of several suicide prevention programs, including Question Persuade Refer (QPR) and Counseling on Access to Lethal Means (CALM). She has led evaluations of several other SAMHSA grants including Systems of Care, Project LAUNCH, and Prescription Drug Overdose initiatives. She is published in several peer-reviewed journals including the American Journal of Community Psychology , the Journal of Primary Prevention, the American Journal on Drug and Alcohol Abuse and the Journal of Drug Education.

Presentation(s):

Preventing Youth Suicide in Missouri: Effectiveness of a Hospital, School and Community Mental Health Center Collaboration in Kansas City

Leslie Wiss is the Director of Trauma Informed Services at Great Circle. Ms. Wiss is a compassionate therapist dedicated to the healing process of children and families and has taken that dedication to helping the helper become better equipped to serve their clients. Leslie has a Master of Arts in rehabilitation counseling from Maryville University, where she received the Faculty Award for Student Excellence. Leslie has over 10 years of experience in the social services field working with children and families of diverse backgrounds seeking support for a range of needs. Leading the efforts of Trauma Informed Care for Great Circle and having completed NMT Phase 2 of The Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics as the Site Certification Coordinator, she brings a wealth of lessons learned around implementation in a large behavioral health agency.

Presentation(s):

The Neuroscience of Trauma and the 6 R’s of Effective Therapeutic Interventions