Poster 31 – Providing Accelerated Resolution Therapy Virtually in a Rural Primary Care Setting

Behavioral healthcare is essential to overall wellbeing. In rural communities, access to behavioral healthcare is limited. Two thirds of rural primary care providers report difficulty in finding access to mental healthcare for their patients (Hills & Hills 2019). In order to provide these much needed services, we have developed an integrated behavioral telehealth model which provides support to 8 rural clinics in central Minnesota. Beginning in September 2021, we began utilizing Accelerated Resolution Therapy to provide trauma focused intervention. “Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) is a brief evidence based psychotherapy that can produce dramatic improvements in a variety of psychiatric disorders in just a few sessions” (Waits et al., 2017, p.1). ART is well suited to the PCBH setting due to the brevity and efficacy of the model. While this model was initially conceptualized as an in person therapy, we have been successful in transitioning to a virtual model within a primary care clinic setting. Recent research provides encouraging evidence that utilizing bilateral processing, specifically rapid eye movements, via telehealth is effective in treating trauma (Farrel et al., 2022). Our preliminary findings indicate that providing ART virtually in a PCBH setting is successful in treating trauma and other psychiatric disorders.