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How Cool is Kuhl? A Man with Vision on a Mission

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This week, my colleague and friend, Dr. David Mee-Lee, sent me a link to a blogpost written by Don Kuhl.  Actually, I was already a subscriber to Don’s Minful MIDweek blog (you should be too), but my travel this week had prevented me from reading his latest installment.  His posts always leave me inspired and give me something to think about.  This week was no different.  More on that in a moment.

In the meantime, let me tell you about Don.  He is the founder and CEO of The Change Companies, a company whose mission is to create tailored materials and programs to support behavioral change for special populatons.  And create they do.  Hundreds of bright, attractive, highly readable publications and guided workbooks for use by professionals and the people they serve.  Their material is exhaustive and comprehensive, including adult behavioral health, criminal justice, education and prevention, clinical assessment, and faith-based programs.  A side note, it was Don and his skillful team at The Change Companies that produced the ICCE Feedback Informed Treatment and Training Manuals.  If you’ve not seen them, you should.  They are the cutting edge of information about FIT.

What is most striking about Don, however, is his passion.  I met him at a conference in San Francisco nearly a decade ago.  On several occasions, he flew to Chicago from his home base in Carson City, Nevada just to meet, talk, and share ideas.  The photo above is from one of the meetings he arranged.  Don is devoted to improving the quality and experience of behavioral health services for professionals and clients alike.  Simply said, Don Kuhl is cool.

In his blogpost this week, Don wrote about that meeting with Jim Prochaska, David Mee-Lee, me, and Bill Miller.  He referred to it as a “highlight” of his recent professional life, a lucky event resulting from his mindful pursuit of relationships with “people who have smiles on their faces and goodness in their hearts.”

My thought?  I was and am the lucky one.  Thanks Don.  Thanks Change Companies.  Keep up the good work.

Outcomes in New Zealand

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Made it back to Chicago after a week in New Zealand providing training and consultation.  As I blogged about last Thursday, the last two days of my trip were spent in Christchurch providing a two-day training on “What Works” for Te Pou–New Zealand’s National Centre of Mental Health Research, Information, and Workforce Development.  Last year around this same time, I provided a similar training for Te Pou for managers and policy makers in Auckland.  News spread and this year my contact at Te Pou, Emma Wood brought the training to the south island.  It is such a pleasure to be involved with such a forward thinking organization.

Long before I arrived, leadership at Te Pou were promoting outcome measurement and feedback.  Here’s a direct quote from their website:

Outcomes information can assist:

  • service users to use their own outcomes data to reflect on their wellbeing and circumstances, talk to clinicians about their support needs and inform their recovery plans
  • clinicians to use outcomes information to support their decision-making in day-to-day practice, monitoring change, better understanding the needs of the service user, and also to begin evaluating the effectiveness of different interventions
  • planners and funders to assess population needs for mental health services and assist with allocation of resources policy and mental health strategy developments through nationally aggregated data.

Indeed, using outcome to inform mental health service delivery is a key aspect of the Past, Present, and Future: Vision Paper–a review of “what works” in care and a plan for improving treatment in the future.  The site even publishes a quarterly newsletter Outcomes Matter.  Take a few minutes and explore the Te Pou website.  While you are there, be sure and download the pamphlet entitled, “A Guide to Talking Therapies.”  As the title implies, this brief, easy-to-read text provides a non-nonsense guide to the various “talk therapies” for consumers (I took several copies home with me from the workshop).

Before ending, let me say a brief hello to the Clinical Practice Leaders from the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand who attended the two-day training in Christchurch.    The dedicated staff use an integrated public health and clinical model and are working to implement ongoing measurement of outcome and consumer feedback into service delivery.  The website contains a free online library including fact sheets, research, and books on the issue of problem gambling that is an incredible resource to professionals and the public.  Following the workshop, the group sent a photo that was taken of us together.  From left to right, they are Wenli Zhang, me, Margaret Sloan, and Jude West.