Dr. Paul Wallace was recently named medical director of The Providence Center. He has been assistant medical director at the facility since October 2023 and has worked on partnerships with Open Door Health, Providence Community Health Centers and Blackstone Valley Community Health Care.
Wallace, who also teaches Brown University psychiatry residents, began his new role on Jan. 20 and succeeds Dr. Mickey Silver. Wallace spoke with Providence Business News about his new role.
PBN: What are your priorities for your new role as medical director?
WALLACE: My overarching goal for The Providence Center is to be known in every corner of Providence for providing excellent, accessible behavioral health care. I want everyone who lives in Providence to know no matter who you are, where you come from, what language you speak, how much money you have – that The Providence Center is an organization that is willing and able to help you with your behavioral health needs.
One of my priorities as it relates to this overarching goal is to be a valued partner to other organizations around Providence, including health care organizations like PCHC and Open Door Health, our local hospitals, our first responders, PPSD [Providence Public School District] and other local education institutions, and social service organizations like Amos House. I want the people that work at all these types of organizations to think of The Providence Center when they are thinking about expanding access to behavioral health care among their clientele.
I also want to ensure the care we provide is excellent, and that happens when the devoted staff here at The Providence Center are well supported. My job is to make sure our staff [members] receive the support they need to excel.
PBN: Why did you want to become medical director of The Providence Center?
WALLACE: I am passionate about working in community behavioral health and I love the city of Providence, so The Providence Center was an obvious fit for me.
One of the things that makes community behavioral health special is that, by definition, we are prepared to care for anyone who walks through our doors, including people with high levels of need due to mental illness and other psychosocial issues. I love working for an organization that actively seeks out challenges and complexity.
I also want to emphasize the word "community" in the term "community behavioral health" – the mission of The Providence Center is to care for anyone and everyone who lives in our community, and to look after the well-being of our community as a whole.
I feel very fortunate to work for an organization that is so well aligned with my values and priorities as a person and as a psychiatrist. Best of all, I get to work alongside hundreds of other professionals at The Providence Center who share these values.
PBN: What unique challenges have you noticed patients with behavioral health issues face?
WALLACE: Behavioral health has a bidirectional relationship with what are known as the "social determinants of health" – things like poverty, homelessness and discrimination. Discrimination, poverty and homelessness – among other social determinants of health – can cause and exacerbate mental illness, and people with mental illness experience discrimination and higher rates of poverty and homelessness as a result of their mental illness.
That is why it is so important that community behavioral health organizations like The Providence Center provide "whole-person care." Not only do we prescribe medications and provide therapy, but we also provide case management and other services that can help our clients in other aspects of their lives, like looking for work and applying for benefits, and we partner with health care organizations like PCHC and Open Door Health to help our clients get connected with primary care since people with mental illness experience high rates of physical health problems.
We also try to speak up and elevate the voices of our clients since our clients aren't always afforded the opportunity to share their experiences widely. By listening to the challenges our clients are facing and amplifying them, we can help address them systematically.
PBN: Some advocates in Rhode Island say youth mental services are in crisis. Do you agree?
WALLACE: The demand for mental health services has increased across the board, including among [youths]. Young people can be negatively affected by all the social determinants of health I mentioned before, and when their parents and other adults in their community are also experiencing these issues, it compromises their ability to shield young people from the damages, often despite their best efforts.
This puts more pressure on behavioral health organizations, social service organizations and school systems to step up and fill in the gaps. In addition, young people with their developing brains can be particularly susceptible to the harms of technology – which we are only starting to recognize – and substance use, which is ubiquitous. So, there is a lot of work to be done among behavioral health organizations in R.I. to help our struggling young people.
PBN: What are some ways to increase Rhode Islanders’ access to behavioral health care?
WALLACE: Increasing access to behavioral health care starts with having the right people in place to provide that care. The CCBHC [Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic] initiative that Rhode Island joined in 2024 has helped with this by providing funding and other resources to organizations like The Providence Center that allow us to employ a strong multidisciplinary team of behavioral health professionals.
Maintaining our funding – most of which comes from the federal government – is critically important to maintaining and growing our services. We face many of the same challenges that our primary care colleagues face, and I am supportive of statewide efforts to increase recruitment and retention of health professionals, as well as training more people to join our professional ranks.
And I am very supportive of efforts to relieve health professionals from the immense paperwork burden we face that detracts from our time spent caring directly for patients and leads to high rates of burnout.
Katie Castellani is a PBN staff writer. You may contact her at Castellani@PBN.com.
