10/10/2026
Op-Ed: Real Voices, Real Change: Ohio PAs Are Essential to the Future of Behavioral Health Care
Each year, two important observances intersect in a meaningful way. PA Week, celebrated October 6–12, recognizes the contributions of PAs across the country. On October 10, World Mental Health Day calls us to embrace the theme, “Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change.”
Together, these observances offer an opportunity to recognize the essential role PAs play in delivering mental health and addiction care and to ensure that the voices of the people receiving that care guide how Ohio’s behavioral health system evolves.
Mental health and substance use conditions affect people in every Ohio community. Yet individuals and families frequently encounter long waits, fragmented services, transportation difficulties, stigma, and shortages of qualified clinicians. PAs help close these gaps by providing psychiatric evaluations, diagnosing and treating mental health and substance use disorders, prescribing medications, coordinating care, and supporting patients throughout recovery.
Ohio PAs practice across the behavioral health continuum, including hospitals, community mental health centers, federally qualified health centers, crisis programs, residential facilities, addiction treatment programs, correctional settings, primary care practices, and outpatient psychiatric clinics. In many settings, a PA is the clinician who follows a patient from the initial evaluation through stabilization, recovery, and transition back into the community.
Ohio PA Kristy Kagy, PA-C, explained:
“As a PA with a background in psychiatry and Medical Affairs, I believe meaningful mental healthcare goes beyond symptom improvement—it should enhance quality of life. Giving people with lived experience a meaningful voice in their care helps identify what matters most to them, including independence, relationships, community involvement, and pursuing the activities that bring purpose and fulfillment. Throughout my career, I have seen how empowering patients to define meaningful improvement helps ensure care addresses not only clinical outcomes, but the quality-of-life outcomes that matter most to each individual.”
This continuity matters. Behavioral health care is built on trust, and trust develops when patients feel heard, respected, and included in decisions. PAs are trained in medical diagnosis and treatment, but effective behavioral medicine requires more than clinical expertise. It also requires listening to patients and families, understanding the realities they face outside the examination room, and developing treatment plans that reflect their goals, values, culture, and circumstances.
That is why this year’s World Mental Health Day theme is especially important. People with lived experience possess knowledge that cannot be gained solely through education or clinical practice. Their experiences reveal where systems succeed, where they create barriers, and what meaningful recovery and support actually look like.
Too often, people are invited to tell their stories but are not given genuine influence over the policies, services, and decisions affecting their lives. Meaningful engagement must extend beyond listening. People with lived experience should have opportunities to co-design programs, evaluate services, strengthen peer-led approaches, advise policymakers, and help hold healthcare organizations accountable.
Paige is a consumer of behavioral health treatment from an Ohio PA and described that impact:
“My provider works with me to provide telehealth services while I am away at college and sees me at least yearly in the office. She doesn’t just keep up with my mental health, but also how school courses are going and my new hobbies. This helps us build trust.”
Employers also see the value PAs bring to behavioral medicine. PAs expand clinical capacity, improve continuity, provide leadership within interdisciplinary teams, and help organizations respond to workforce shortages without sacrificing quality.
Jonathan Lee, CEO of Signature Health, Inc, an employer of PAs in behavioral medicine stated:
“We fully support the call to move beyond just hearing the stories of people who live with mental illnesses and giving them meaningful roles. One of the most powerful features of Signature Health is that more than 50% of our Board of Directors are patients or family members or guardians of our patients. With this governance model, our patients actively participate in developing our strategic plan, setting policy, and ensuring our focus meets the needs of our patients. I am deeply honored to lead this incredible team of people pursuing this incredible mission and as a recovering person myself I am continuously reminded of the incredible impact we can make together when we bring our personal experiences to bear. I hope more leaders in our field will embrace this power and invite people onto their Boards and into leadership roles.”
Recognizing the value of PAs must be accompanied by action. Healthcare organizations should remove unnecessary administrative barriers, use PAs to the full extent of their education and experience, and include them in clinical leadership and service design. Policymakers should modernize Ohio’s PA practice laws so that outdated requirements do not delay care or limit the workforce at a time when behavioral health services are urgently needed.
PAs must also act. We should create meaningful opportunities for patients and people in recovery to influence program development, quality improvement, policy, and clinical education. Their participation should be valued, supported, and—when appropriate—compensated as a legitimate form of expertise.
PA Week is a time to celebrate the profession, but it is also a time to consider how PAs can help build a stronger and more responsive healthcare system. World Mental Health Day reminds us that this system cannot be designed solely by clinicians, administrators, or policymakers.
The future of behavioral health care in Ohio must be built by PAs, other professionals, families, and people with lived experience working together. Real change begins when we move beyond simply hearing people’s stories and give them a meaningful role in shaping what comes next.
Let us build mental health and addiction services with the people who rely on them, not merely for them.
Learn more about the global campaign through the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health Day resources.
Michell McDiffett, DMSc, PA-C, DFAAPA, serves as Associate Medical Director of Residential Services at Signature Health, Inc., where she leads clinical operations, supports program development, and provides integrated patient care. She is a preceptor for PA students at Lake Erie College and former program faculty. PA McDiffett is President-Elect, and a Past President, of OAPA.