INTERFACE: A FREE Mental Health Resources for Westwood Residents

Are you concerned about your own mental health, or that of someone you love? Did you hear “it’s ok not to be ok” one too many times on World Mental Health Day last week, but you don’t know how to get to “ok?” Westwood is among the subscribing communities to William James College’s* INTERFACE program. This program is a helpline which offers referrals to mental health providers (the official literature says that the referral is “based on location, specialty, insurance or fee requirement and availability.”

I met Tanya L. Snyder, M.Ed., LMHC, who is the Clinical Supervisor for the INTERFACE program, at Westwood Day and later spoke with her about the INTERFACE program. “Callers speak to a resource and referral counselor. The counselor is either a licensed mental health professional or a masters’ prepared doctoral student at William James College,” she says of the person to whom the caller would speak when they call INTERFACE.

As other access to mental health referrals, such as an employer’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP) exist, I asked Snyder why she would recommend using INTERFACE. “Any access points to care are good to utilize! What makes the INTERFACE Referral Service Helpline unique is that we provide therapeutic matches to callers. A therapeutic match is with a provider who is able to meet the caller’s needs, location, availability and insurance or self-pay fee requirements. We are also committed, beyond providing the match, to follow up to ensure the matches are a good fit for the caller.” Studies, including one separate from INTERFACE in 2012, have shown that the likelihood of a person seeking mental health services engaging in treatment decreases the longer that they must wait to meet with a provider. INTERFACE’s official literature states it has an average time period of 14 days between contact and the first appointment, and as such a much lower disengagement rate (28% on average as opposed to 1.3% for INTERFACE callers).

“A provider is going to require a minor’s guardian(s) to consent to treatment, so we do require a minor to call with a guardian to give us consent to begin the process of searching for therapeutic matches,” Snyder responded when I asked about the possibility of a minor calling INTERFACE themselves without a parent or guardian.

“Referrals are not solely to William James alums. We ensure that all providers in our database are licensed and have no significant disciplinary action on their records. Our database is free for providers to join and we currently we have over 8,700 providers in our database…[INTERFACE is] a free and confidential service for residents to find mental health resources and therapeutic matches with providers in their area.”

INTERFACE Referral Service can be reached at 617-332-3666, Monday-Friday between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM. If you are not a Westwood resident, but are wondering if your town participates in INTERFACE, a list of subscribing communities can be found under the Communities Tab at www.interface.williamjames.edu. Snyder adds “This website also has an extensive array of mental health related topics complete with articles, book recommendations and resources both locally and nationally. The website also has many guides to help callers navigate the mental health system.” Please note: INTERFACE is not a crisis line, here is a listing of crisis resources.

*Formerly the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology.