Mental health initiatives
Innovative programs and workforce development are preparing future mental health providers.
Social workers are the largest group of mental health providers by occupation in the nation, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. There are more clinically trained social workers – over 200,000 – than psychiatrists, psychologists and psychiatric nurses combined, according to the National Association of Social Workers, citing SAMHSA data.
The VCU School of Social Work is helping to meet the ongoing need for mental health providers and other clinical social workers through a number of initiatives, led by Cassie DeSena-Jacobs, D.S.W., LCSW, the school's director of mental health initiatives and an assistant professor in teaching.
“There’s been a strong need here at VCU and nationally for mental health,” Dr. DeSena-Jacobs says. "We have students who are saying very loudly, ‘We want to be clinicians. We want to work in mental health. What can the School of Social Work do to meet this need?’ The VCU School of Social Work is primed to meet that need."
Community-embedded faculty member Brittani Sanders, left, leads an M.S.W. Skills Lab session.
Student engagement opportunities
Design thinking and social impact innovation
The School of Social Work and VCU's da Vinci Center for Innovation partnered on a series of introductory Design Thinking workshops for social work students in Spring 2025, culminating with VCU Design Thinking for Social Impact. The workshops helped equip students with tools to address complex mental health challenges.
"Design thinking" is a non-linear, iterative process to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. It is most useful to tackle ill-defined or unknown problems and involves five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test1.
Mental health speed mentoring
Social work alumni and current students will participate in speed mentoring events in Spring 2025 and Fall 2025. Alumni will make 3- to 5-minute pitches on their careers in mental health as they cycle through and talk to each student. Up to 15 students and 15 alumni are expected to attend.
The sessions are open to all social work students, regardless of their academic concentration or interest. The initiative's focus is supporting workforce development.
Hear it from the Professionals Series
- 6-8 p.m. ET Tuesday, March 25 (program starts at 6:30)
- Academic Learning Commons, 3100; and Zoom
Allison Miessler will speak about her policy work with Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance, a nonprofit focused on policy, advocacy and education at the state and federal levels. MMHLA works toward closing maternal mental health gaps across the nation and is a prime example of a grassroots group. Allison will speak to VCU School of Social Work students about the gaps the MMHLA is currently seeing at the community level that social workers can currently get involved with regarding needs for mothers, birthing people, families and maternal mental health.
Allison is a proud graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, where she earned a Master of Social Work in 2014 with a focus on public policy and administration. Allison's career has been centered on nonprofit work, public policy and constituent services at both the local and state levels, giving her a strong foundation in legislative processes and community advocacy.
In Allison's current role at the Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance, she uses her experience in research, legislative analysis and strategic collaboration to support and advance policies that improve maternal mental health and promote inclusive, community-focused solutions. Allison's passion for this work is deeply personal – after experiencing two traumatic births, Allison became committed to advocating for compassionate, evidence-based care and lasting policy change. Outside of work, Allison's most important role is being a mom to two young daughters, while her husband works in athletics at the University of Richmond.
- For additional information or Zoom details, email jacobsc2@vcu.edu.
Academic opportunities
Clinical Skills Labs
Starting in 2024, the School of Social Work has provided multiple clinical skills labs each spring and fall semester, first for M.S.W. students and then for B.S.W. students as well.
These experiential learning opportunities, both in person and virtually, allow students to role-play as practitioner and client, to explore a number of instructor-led scenarios, to ask detailed questions and to engage in deep discussions.
Dr. DeSena-Jacobs leads these initiatives, with support from full-time and community-embedded (adjunct) faculty who serve as instructors.
There will be at least one clinical skills lab every semester with a serious mental illness or mental health focus. When you do clinical work, you work in mental health.” – Cassie DeSena-Jacobs, D.S.W., LCSW
Skills lab instructors
Tara Pappas, M.S.W., LCSW, CSOTP
Community-embedded faculty
Serious Mental Illness coursework
Treatment of SMI (Serious Mental Illness) Through a Trauma-Informed and Evidence-Based Perspective was introduced in Fall 2023 and has been in high demand ever since. Sections are available for on-campus and online M.S.W. students in the fall and spring.
Our students appreciate coursework that allows them to gain skills they can apply to real-world situations. In the SMI class, students get acquainted with what it's like to work in community mental health. Not only do they learn which therapeutic models they can apply, but they also pick up practical knowledge; for example: how to assist a client who may be experiencing a mental health crisis. – Klara Prachar, M.S.W., LCSW
The course provides students with an in-depth analysis of the diagnoses that are considered “serious mental illness,” namely treatment-resistant depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. They also learn about screening; treatment models; pharmacology; suicidality and crises; serious mental illness in children and adolescent populations; and the importance of collaboration.
Perhaps most importantly, the course takes an anti-racist lens, providing a historical context of serious mental illness and impacted populations. Students learn how to implement anti-racist materials when working with clients and to understand oppression in an organizational setting. Students create and share infographics on this anti-racist focus.
The SMI course at VCU challenged me to deepen my understanding of how serious mental illnesses have historically been treated. It not only taught me what effective change would look like but also how we can implement such changes in practice. I valued the perspectives and skill set that came with this class because of the focus on anti-racist and trauma-informed practices. I have walked away from this class with knowledge of the struggles that many populations with SMI still face today, but I am hopeful of a better tomorrow.”
Alum Fatina Batool (B.S.W.’23; M.S.W.’24), on SMI class
Although my clinical field placement is providing a breadth of experience that will help prepare me for a position as a clinical social worker, the clinical skills lab I attended served to further deepen and diversify my knowledge of assessment and diagnosis. With the support of a professor who was a seasoned licensed professional, I was able to gain valuable exposure to and ask questions about a realistic case study that I had not encountered at my field placement.”
Rebekah Conrad, M.S.W. student, on clinical skills labs
I wanted to take this course because it is crucial for social workers to examine everything through an anti-racist lens. Examining SMI through an anti-racist lens is especially critical, as it helps future practitioners understand how systemic racism and trauma intersect with mental health diagnoses and treatment outcomes. By explicitly addressing these intersections, this course prepares social workers to deliver more culturally responsive, trauma-informed care that better serves all communities and works to dismantle harmful, and sometimes deadly, biases in mental healthcare systems.”
Alum Olivia Jessar (M.S.W.’24), on the SMI class
SMI with Dr. DeSena-Jacobs was the most important class of my M.S.W. education. I am so much better informed on what it means to work in mental health through trauma-informed and anti-racist practices, and am grateful that I got to learn this in my time as a student so that I can carry it with me throughout my career.”
Emma Lockman, M.S.W. student, on SMI class
New & next: Courses, certificates, undergraduate minor
- Neurobiology of Mental Health launched for M.S.W. students in Spring 2025. Coursework is framed around a mental health lens and how to think about mental health through a biological perspective.
"It's really important when you're working in mental health to understand the way that our brains work, the way that we function, so that we can be better clinicians," Dr. DeSena-Jacobs says. - Mental Health and Practice launched for M.S.W. students in Spring 2025. This case-based class presents students with four cases and assigns them to treatment teams. Students apply material they are learning through the perspective of these cases from real-world practitioners and clients.
"They learn about assessments, they learn about legalities of the mental health system, they learn about mistakes that clinicians make," Dr. DeSena-Jacobs says. "What we hear from students all the time is, 'We want practice experience.' So that's the lens we were thinking about as we built this." - A 12-credit graduate Mental Health Certificate is in process, which would make VCU only the second school of social work in the nation to offer such a certificate. Coursework would include:
- SLWK 791 - Treatment of SMI through a Trauma Informed & Evidence Based Perspective
- SLWK 727 - Trauma & Social Work Practice
- SLWK 791 - Neurobiology of Mental Health
- SLWK 791 - Mental Health & Practice
- A 12-credit graduate Trauma-Informed Practice Certificate, is also in the planning stages. It would be available as a stand-alone certificate, or students could pair the M.S.W. degree and certificate in 63 credits. Coursework would include:
- SLWK 727 - Trauma and Social Work Practice: Theory, Assessment and Intervention
- SLWK 791 - Racism, Trauma & Resilience
- SLWK 742 - Core Concepts of Child and Adolescent Trauma
- SLWK 791 -Treatment of SMI (Serious Mental Illness) Through a Trauma-Informed and Evidence-Based Perspective
Training and continuing education
Serious Mental Illness webinar series
The School of Social Work has offered a spring continuing education opportunity in the form of a 7-part webinar series since 2024. The most recent, from January-April 2025, Serious Mental Illness in Focus: Specialized Topics for Practitioners, featured a variety of experts, including in the areas of psychiatry, psychopharmacology and at the intersection of bipolar disorder and pregnancy.
The 2024 series, Insights into Serious Mental Illness: A Comprehensive Seminar Series, included topics on substance use, racial trauma, crisis works, children and adolescents, suicidal ideation and the Virginia legal system.
Continuing education credits are available through the NASW-Virginia Chapter, and digital badges are provided for participants who attend all sessions. Recordings of most sessions are available online. Courses are free for social work students, faculty and staff, and discounted for others with school connections.
Clinical Supervision Training
Clinical supervision training sessions for those who want to supervise future LCSWs are scheduled for Sept. 19-20, 2025. Instructors are Dr. DeSena-Jacobs and Prachar.
In Spring 2025, sessions targeted training for the supervision of both LCSWs and LCPs. The School of Social Work leveraged collaborated with colleagues from the College of Health Professions: Denise Hall, M.S., LPC, NCC, CRC; and Courtney M. Holmes, Ph.D., LPC, LMFT, CRC, NCC.
The interactive training includes multiple learning modalities such as case study, didactics, videos, self-assessment and discussion.
Mental health first aid
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Mental Health First Aid is a course that teaches participants how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental illnesses and substance use disorders. Anyone can be trained in mental health first aid, and the VCU School of Social Work will be providing trainings in this. Interested in becoming a Mental Health First Aider? Please contact Dr. DeSena-Jacobs at jacobsc2@vcu.edu.
De-escalation training
Dr. DeSena-Jacobs has worked with faculty and staff from VCU's Cabell Library to work on de-escalation training. The De-escalation Guidelines and Training Taskforce (DEGTT) has developed guidelines and a training plan to equip library employees working in public service environments with a set of strategies for de-escalating challenging situations. These materials will include both general strategies for navigating escalated situations, and context-specific content (such as contact information for other VCU units that can assist in the moment).