Safety Planning MHA

Emily St. Amant, MA, LPC-MHSP

Emily served as a Clinical Manager at Psych Hub from 2019 to 2021, helping to bridge the gap between research and academia to the practical real-life application of theory and therapeutic interventions. She assisted the team throughout the content development process by reviewing and creating content to ensure it will resonate with her fellow clinicians and be beneficial to all audiences.

Currently Emily works for the American Counseling Association as Counseling Resources and Clinical Education Specialist.

Emily is a licensed professional counselor, mental health service provider. She completed her Master’s in Counseling with an emphasis in Mental Health at MidAmerica Nazarene University. She is a Tennessee counseling licensure board approved supervisor and has been designated as a mandatory pre-screening agent.

Before joining Psych Hub, she gained many years of experience in the mental health and substance abuse treatment field, much of which was spent serving as a therapist to a diverse caseload in a community mental health setting. She also has experience in crisis counseling and assessment, intake evaluations for level of care placement, outpatient and inpatient treatment, and utilization review.

Keita M. Franklin, PhD, LCSW

Dr. Keita M. Franklin was Psych Hub’s, Chief Clinical Officer from 2019 to 2020.  In this capacity, she served as a key member of the executive team overseeing the development and production of all clinical content for Psych Hub’s ever-expanding repository of educational videos and informational materials. A nationally-recognized expert, Dr. Franklin, ensures all clinical content is on the cutting edge of the intersection between health care and information technology. Key to Psych Hub’s goal of revolutionizing how mental health care education and training are delivered, Dr. Franklin leads the esteemed Psych Hub, clinical team, ensuring all Psych Hub products are evidence-based and trauma-informed.

With over 25 years of progressively responsible experience, Dr. Franklin is spearheading efforts to improve mental health literacy across the Nation by championing the development of specialized evidence-based training for providers thereby improving mental health care outcomes for at-risk population groups.  A public health expert and transformational leader, Dr. Franklin has spent her career driving complex organizational change in the federal sector, always improving the systems that provide care for our Nation’s military, family members, and veteran populations. 

Before joining Psych Hub, Dr. Franklin served as a senior executive at both the Department of Veteran Affairs and the Department of Defense.  In these roles, Dr. Franklin served as the principal advisor to Department leadership for all matters on suicide prevention, and she is widely credited with leading a transformative, enterprise-wide shift from a crisis intervention posture to an upstream, broad public policy approach focused on continuous surveillance and early prevention.  Dr. Franklin was also responsible for leading a multi-disciplined team of experts in advancing evidence-based prevention practices for over 20 million Veterans and reaching our Nation’s heroes wherever they live, work, thrive, and receive care. A poised and articulate communicator of strategic messaging, Dr. Franklin has been frequently asked to testify before committees in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and led numerous caucus roundtable discussions with members of Congress.

While serving as a senior executive within the Department of Defense, Dr. Franklin was responsible for suicide prevention policy, programs, and oversight. During her tenure, she conducted a first-of-its-kind comprehensive, program review and authored new DoD policy directives and instructions, optimizing higher headquarter guidance for all military service branches. She also chaired several DoD senior leader committees charged with developing solutions for vexing mental health issues impacting our service members and their families. 

Adept at building partnerships and coalitions, Dr. Franklin was singularly responsible for bolstering relationships with both the private and public sector in the advancement of key suicide prevention initiatives.  An experienced manager of large programs, she proved critical during congressional-level advocacy for budget and programming activities while simultaneously directing a multi-million dollar research and evaluation program.  Her efforts resulted in high-quality service delivery for active duty, reserve, and National Guard members and their families.

Dr. Franklin is a licensed social worker with a specialization in children and families. She earned a Ph.D. in social work with specialized training and certifications from the Center for Advancement of Research Methods and Analysis (CARMA). Dr. Franklin began her career in child welfare and has dedicated much of her work to researching the impact of wartime trauma and post-traumatic stress on families. She serves on several national panels, including the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention. Dr. Franklin has received numerous federal and civilian awards for her efforts leading military, family, mental health, and suicide prevention programs.  Dr. Franklin has published work in the areas of military social work, child abuse, domestic violence, suicide prevention, and substance abuse. She and has served as an adjunct professor in the graduate programs at Virginia Commonwealth University and George Mason University.  Dr. Franklin holds certificates from Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education on “Leading Large Organizational Change” and Women in Leadership” as well as the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School course on “Executive Leadership.”

Kelly Posner Gerstenhaber, PhD

Dr. Kelly Posner is a Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University and her work is saving lives all over the globe across 6 continents. The President of the American Psychiatric Association noted her work with the Columbia Protocol could be “like the introduction of antibiotics.” The U.S. Department of Defense said that her work is “nothing short of a miracle” and stated "her effective model of improving the world will help propel us closer to a world without suicide.” The CDC noted that her work is “changing the paradigm in suicide risk assessment in the US and worldwide.” 

Dr. Posner’s work has been noted in a keynote speech at the White House and in Congressional hearings, and she gave the lead presentation in a forum on school safety at the U.S. Senate in her partnership with the Parkland community. Through her advocacy she has changed local, national and international policy, which in turn has helped achieve reductions in suicide across all sectors of society. Israeli government officials said her work “is not only saving millions of lives but in Israel it is literally changing the way we live our lives.” 

She gave the invited presentation on tackling depression and suicide at the first European Union high level conference on mental health, was recognized as the Most Distinguished Alumna of her graduate school at Yeshiva University in the past 50 years, and received the New York State Suicide Prevention Award. She was also named one of New York Magazine’s “Most Influential.”

The Columbia Protocol is policy across all 50 states, many national agencies, and most countries. Dr. Posner was commissioned by the FDA to develop a scientific approach that has become the gold standard for suicide monitoring and is ubiquitous across the U.S. and worldwide. The FDA has characterized her work as “setting a standard in the field” and a lead article in The New York Times called it “one of the most profound changes of the past sixteen years to regulations governing drug development.” Her scholarly work has been included in the compendium of the most important research in the history of the study of suicide. 

In 2018, Dr. Posner was awarded The Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service.