Intensive Outpatient Program
for Chronic Mood and Anxiety Conditions
Many people have suffered from anxiety, depression or mood swings since childhood. But untreated psychiatric episodes tend to last longer, occur with more frequency and become more severe over the course of a person's life. Today, many people receive medication with little or no psychological interventions. Yet research tells us that treatment outcomes are best when psychotherapy and medication are combined; that medication works best for first episodes and least for chronic conditions; and that relapse rates are as high as 90 percent for patients receiving only medication even if the illness has been in remission for years. In short, gains made on medication are not maintained.
Fair Oaks Therapeuticum presents an alternative for patients who have not found the relief they hoped for. We believe an integrative treatment approach under the guidance of a clinical psychologist is the best option for those who have suffered psychological problems for many years. Not only will patients be supported through physiological treatments like nutrition, natural medicines, and medication, but with therapeutic interventions based on understanding and supporting neglected and undeveloped self aspects. It is through intensive therapeutic guidance and hands-on behavioral techniques that events and experiences that tend to compromise healing efforts need to be worked through. Early biographical trauma, prolonged stress reactions, problems with intimacy and autonomy, psychological effects from pain and illness, and anxiety states of feeling less than … are being worked through so that patients can have a chance at a new future. Recovery is even better when patients can continue their work and family life while addressing old scripts and new behaviors.
Who Is It For?
The Intensive Outpatient Program is for adults with a diagnosis of repeated or refractory Major Depression, Bi-Polar Disorder, Severe Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and anxiety states that have not responded to treatment.
What Services are Provided?
Our Intensive Outpatient Program offers multiple interventions per week to allow for intensive treatment and for continued yet modified engagement in family and work life. We know that change takes time and that longstanding conditions require an ongoing therapeutic commitment for recovery. While intensive psychological treatment needs to be finite, we recognize that significant change goes through stages and is initiated, practiced, and modified to fit an individual's life. Change initiated in a "crash course" is rarely maintained. Fair Oaks Therapeuticum's Intensive Outpatient Programs represent a guided recovery process over many months. Our process is focused on both, inner exploration and functioning in ones family and work life.Fair Oaks Therapeuticum's Program for Depression and Anxiety is designed to initiate and maintain healthful rhythms and lifestyles, addressing the needs of body and soul, as well as needs for community and individual life direction. Therapeutic efforts are directed toward understanding symptoms as messengers of a highly complex organism—the human being—that has become derailed. Patients will learn to understand themselves less as victims, or unsuccessful and broken individuals, but as human beings that have been presented with challenges. These challenges can become either a gateway for furthering development, or one of contraction and decline. Blame, fault, and judgment are addressed and worked through, so patients can begin to claim their humanity.
Steps in our program include:
- Initial Psychological Evaluation: Testing assures accurate diagnosis, and allows for individualized treatment planning.
- Individual and Group Psychotherapy: Therapeutic interventions focus on understanding the impact and consequence of past trauma for the present and learning coping strategies that help patients maintain functioning in the present. Learned techniques include, pacing, self-care, relaxation techniques, sleep hygiene, self-soothing exercises, imagery, managing negative and self-defeating cognition, and being given mental (neuro-psychological) and physical tools to self-manage psychological pain.
- Therapeutic Physiological Services (Wellness Program): Longstanding psychological conditions always manifest in physiological pain and illness as well. Patients are required to become physically active and establishing a routine that they can maintain after leaving the program. Massage therapy, relaxation and Yoga are utilized to increase functional capacities and to maximize the effects of Pacing-Cycles to manage transference. Physically fit individuals cope better with everyday life stresses and are more likely to avoid injury.
- BEST Employment Skills Training Program: Vocational interests, aptitudes and return to work skills are identified and matched to maximize efforts to return patients to meaningful, gainful employment. Time management, informational interviews, resume building and other job search skills are utilized and practiced.
- Aftercare: All patients receive a detailed aftercare program. After completion of the Intensive Outpatient Program patients are either returned to their previous therapist or can continue their therapeutic work, on a more limited basis, with a staff therapist. The goal of aftercare is to maintain gains made and to prevent relapse into old behavior and illness pattern.
How long does treatment last?
Most patients remain in our Intensive Outpatient Program for six to 24 months.. After stability has been maintained for four to six months, a less intensive maintenance phase is initiated. The maintenance phase is focused on relapse prevention.
Contact
For more information or to make an initial appointment please contact Dr. Ursula Stehle at (916) 962-0222, ext 1#, or email her at drstehle@therapeuticum.org.
Last modified on 01.13.10
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