Faith-Based Community Coordinator, West Tennessee Grand Division
Tennesee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services
Jackson, Tennessee
Amy Bechtol is the West Tennessee Faith-Based Community Coordinator with the Tennessee Department of Mental Health & Substance Abuse Services. She works with the faith community across 21 counties building partnerships, raising awareness, and improving access to wellness and recovery resources. Her mission is to engage, empower, and equip the faith community to meet the human needs within their congregations and communities.
Amy is a psychology professor by training and has spent 24 years teaching college students in diverse settings from early college high school and the community college to private, regional, and state universities. She holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology from East Tennessee State University and a master’s degree in social psychology from the University of Florida. She has published peer-reviewed research articles in the area of health-related attitude and behavior change and remains passionately interested in change motivation and mental health-related stigma, especially in the faith community.
Amy’s heart is to facilitate grace wherever she goes. She is a person in long-term recovery from alcohol addiction and co-occurring mental health diagnoses and has seen firsthand the power of healing relationships. She invites the communities of faith with whom she works to understand problem behaviors as a response to pain and through her own story of hope, she seeks to spread the word that recovery is possible.
I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
Thursday, April 21, 2022
11:15 AM – 12:30 PM ET