Outpatient Mental Health Center (OMHC)

The Outpatient Mental Health Center (OMHC) Program at Elevate offers confidential talk-therapy for clients in a safe, professional environment where support is offered by caring, licensed clinicians. This process can be called “counseling” but it is not to be confused with Substance Use Disorder (SUD)-specific counseling. If an individual is receiving SUD treatment, many insurances still support sessions with Mental Health providers.

Within Elevate’s OMHC, clients can explore themselves at their own pace and work with their experienced professionals to set the goals that are tailored for their circumstances. Clinicians can assist clients with many different sets of circumstances, including but certainly not limited to: pursuing greater self-knowledge and personal growth, coping with depression, anxiety, PTSD, Bipolar disorder, and other diagnoses, untangling generational or childhood trauma, feelings associated with major life transitions, identifying aspects of life or self that might need change, addressing self-care or work/life balance, and more. There is no determined time for any of this work. Client and clinician work together to create a plan that is appropriate for each individual.

Outpatient Mental Health Center Therapy

ERC strives to treat clients holistically. Mental Health Therapy addresses the many different aspects of issues that can occur in a person’s life. OMHC offers clients the ability to work towards self-improvement and knowledge in diverse ways, utilizing some of the following techniques and methods:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
Motivational Interviewing (MI)
Trauma-Informed Care
Client-Centered Treatment
Strengths-Based Approach
Mindfulness and many other evidenced-based practices

Our licensed, knowledgeable, and caring therapists work with clients to explore the many aspects that make up the whole person and might be contributing to mental health concerns.

Mental health disorders co-occurring with addiction can also be addressed by utilizing integrated treatment with our multidisciplinary team approach.

Helps address the underlying issues contributing to SUD and Mental Illness.
Addresses causes as well as effects of presenting issues.
Provides tools to maintain goals once counseling has concluded.
Educates regarding techniques that can be utilized for self-maintenance.

Individual (One-On-One) Sessions

Clients have time and space held for them to explore themselves and their own issues. From depression and/or anxiety coping skills, to grief, trauma, and more, clients can look at what makes them who they are and where they want to move from here.

Family Sessions

Families can often experience friction from difficult shared past experiences, including the substance abuse of one or several family members, shared trauma, or loss. Dynamics of family groups might be hard to navigate around a dinner table but easier to discuss with a neutral person helping to interpret and bring perspective to situations guided by participants.

Couples Sessions

Relationships can be complicated and it is often helpful to have a person to talk to when conflict, loss, trauma, transition, or other issues arise that take focus that can be difficult to achieve. An open forum with your partner presents a valuable opportunity to work through feelings and process circumstances that have the potential to cause unwanted rifts.

Dual Diagnosis of Mental Illness and Substance Abuse Disorder (SUD)

Counseling and Behavioral Therapy

Therapy focusing on BOTH mental illness and SUD concurrently.
Utilizes a Treatment TEAM approach.
Decreases the “Silo” effects of operating separately.
Addresses issues that impact many aspects of the client.

At ERC, we use various therapeutic techniques depending on each patient’s needs, such as the following:

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Client Centered Care

Individuals are often more successful when they set their own goals for success and feel empowered to make life decisions.

Within Elevate OMHC, we rely less on measuring success against predetermined programmatic goals and more on allowing the client to define their own standards and setting individualized goals.

Strengths-Based Approach

This type of approach builds the clients on their strengths, specifically seeing them as resourceful and resilient when they are in adverse conditions. Therapy using this approach is client led and centered on outcomes in the future individual’s set of strengths.

Evidence-Based Treatments

Individuals ready to address their Mental Health issues have many treatment options. It is important to keep in mind that no single treatment strategy is suitable for everyone. Elevate offers multiple modalities of treatment. Treatment plans and techniques utilized are fluid to address the varied needs of individuals receiving treatment.

Motivational Interviewing (MI)

A collaborative and goal-oriented style of communication that focuses on helping clients identify and strengthen personal motivation and commitment to change.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

A form of psychological treatment that has been demonstrated to be effective for a range of problems including depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug use problems, marital problems, eating disorders, and severe mental illness.

CBT is based on several core principles, including:

Psychological problems are based, in part, on faulty or unhelpful ways of thinking.
Psychological problems are based, in part, on learned patterns of unhelpful behavior.
People suffering from psychological problems can learn better ways of coping with them, thereby relieving their symptoms and becoming more effective in their lives.

CBT treatment usually involves efforts to change thinking patterns. These strategies might include:

Learning to recognize one’s distortions in thinking that are creating problems, and then to reevaluate them in light of reality.
Gaining a better understanding of the behavior and motivation of others.
Using problem-solving skills to cope with difficult situations.
Learning to develop a greater sense of confidence in one’s own abilities.

CBT treatment also usually involves efforts to change behavioral patterns. These strategies might include:

Facing one’s fears instead of avoiding them.
Using role playing to prepare for potentially problematic interactions with others.
Learning to calm one’s mind and relax one’s body.

Not all CBT will use all of these strategies. Rather, the psychologist and patient/client work together, in a collaborative fashion, to develop an understanding of the problem and to develop a treatment strategy.
CBT places an emphasis on helping individuals learn to be their own therapists.
Through exercises in the session as well as “homework” exercises outside of sessions, patients/clients are helped to develop coping skills, whereby they can learn to change their own thinking, problematic emotions, and behavior.

CBT therapists emphasize what is going on in the person’s current life, rather than what has led up to their difficulties. A certain amount of information about one’s history is needed, but the focus is primarily on moving forward in time to develop more effective ways of coping with life.

Mindfulness

Formal and informal mindfulness practices are key parts of many different types of evidence-based psychotherapy, including Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

There are many benefits associated with mindfulness. Research has shown that mindfulness can lead to better overall well-being, as well as fewer psychological issues and emotional reactions, (e.g., by decreasing problem behavior, such as substance abuse). Mindfulness has been proven to positively impact brain structure and connectivity.

Some mindfulness tools to consider include: (no endorsement implied or compensation received)

INSIGHT TIMER: You can access over 25,000 guided meditations of varying lengths and styles. There is also a paid option.

SMILING MIND: Hundreds of meditation options are offered in various categories including foundations, relationships, sleep, and work life. This free application provides children, adolescents, and adults activities they can use to incorporate mindfulness skills in their daily lives.

Trauma-Informed Care (TIC)

Trauma-informed practices and trauma-specific comprehensive therapeutic services are used to approach the impact of trauma and ensure that a client’s trauma experience is central to aspects of communication and care. Principles of TIC include:

Creating an atmosphere of safety
Operating based on collaboration and mutuality
Exhibiting trustworthiness and transparency
Encouraging peer support
Respecting cultural, historical, and gender issues

TRAUMA: According to The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMSHA)
“Trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life-threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”

Resilience

Resilience is a person’s ability to cope with life’s challenges.

Resilience helps a person:

Believe they can affect the stressors or difficulties they face
Persevere in the face of challenges
Approach challenges with an open mindset
View challenges as an opportunity for growth

Resilience can be taught and can increase over time! The more resilient a person is, the more likely they will be able to navigate any ongoing symptoms and challenges they face throughout life or throughout Substance use Recovery.

Interventions that use mindfulness strategies can be particularly effective in helping people with mental health issues or substance use disorders to build resilience.