Patricia Coleman was talking care of her ill mother in 1997, while also working as a freelance human-resources consultant for Behavioral Health Response, Inc. At one point, the nonprofit – which operates a 24-hour crisis-intervention call center – asked her if she would come on as a full-time HR team member.
“I’m still grateful that they understood I was taking care of my mother and that came first,” she said. “They supported that wholeheartedly.”
Since then, Coleman has seen numerous families work through crisis situations by calling BHR’s 24-hour hotline and meeting with their outreach clinical team. Many of them, like her, were caring for sick family members or grieving the loss of loved ones.
In her almost 20 years at BHR, Coleman has served in numerous leadership roles. And in 2012, Coleman was named as BHR’s president and CEO. Through its crisis-intervention system, BHR provides 24-hour access to mental health services to the residents of the City of St. Louis and the counties of St. Louis, St. Charles, Franklin, Jefferson, Lincoln, Warren, Iron, St. Francois and Washington.
“The core of me is helping people, and therefore I ended up at BHR because of that,” she said. “It has given me such a rich career. In this organization, we really do save lives. There is no health without mental health.”
When Coleman started with BHR, it was only three years old and still establishing itself, she said. Now BHR receives 28,000 crisis calls per month has 150 employees – 129 of those being crisis-intervention clinicians.
“Our impact is huge,” she said. “We are making an impact saving lives because we are diverting people from the hospital. We are 24/7, and there are no barriers to our services.”
Coleman’s educational roots are one of her defining traits, she said.
“I’m a product of the St. Louis Public Schools, so all of my education happened in St. Louis,” she said.
As a single parent, she raised two sons while working fulltime and going to school part-time through evening classes. On that rigorous schedule, she earned her MBA from Fontbonne University and her bachelor’s from Saint Louis University.
Growing up in the African-American community in St. Louis, she said she always felt mental health was taboo.
“So now that I’m able to work at this organization, I’m a total advocate for it,” she said. “I’m trying to educate the community, but especially our community, that it is really is okay – that you can be healthy and this is nothing to be ashamed of.”
Coleman’s experience spans nonprofit organizations, governmental agencies and private sector corporations. She is a surveyor for the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF), which administers an accreditation process that distinguishes rehabilitation and human services providers for their quality and outcomes focus. Through this, she has lead delegations of surveyors on qualifying visits throughout the country.
In December 2012 the first day of her job as CEO at BHR, she participated in a delegation to Cuba with the focus on epidemiology of substance use and mental health disorders. She was honored in November 2012 with the distinguished Excellence in Business Award from the St. Louis American Foundation, followed by Black Enterprise Magazine’s People on the Move designation. In October 2015 she received the professional achievement award from Fontbonne University and March 2016 was recipient of the Visionary Leadership award from National Council for Behavioral Health.
This past January, Coleman became adjunct professor for Washington University’s Brown School of Social Work.
After one of her classes at WUSTL, a woman approached her.
“She told me that BHR saved her life,” Coleman said.
The woman’s mother and father passed away within months of each other, she said. “She was dealing with grief, and it put her in state of depression,” Coleman said.
Those kinds of comments are not unusual to hear, she said, and that confirms to her that she’s working at the right place.
Coleman is an alumna of both the St. Louis Business Diversity Initiative Fellows and the Focus St. Louis Leadership programs and serves as chair of the Workforce Investment Board (City of St. Louis), board member of Mental Health America of Eastern Region and executive committee board member of the St. Louis Regional Chamber.
She lives in St. Louis city with her husband Harold, a retired law enforcement officer. They often spend their weekends with their grandchildren, Briana and RJ,. They are active members of the Mercy Seat Missionary Baptist Church, where they serve the community through the Food Pantry, annual Health Awareness fair and as co-directors for the youth team ministries.
“I am passionate about this work,” she said. “Growth to me is serving more people. We are going to serve as many people as we can serve. Teamwork is very important to me. And the team that I work with, we wouldn’t be able to without them.”
