Unleashing the Power of Multidisciplinary Resources in Mental Health

Welcome to the presentation on multidisciplinary resources in recovery coaching. In this presentation, you're going to learn the functions and purpose of and where to locate the following additional resources. Mental health and addiction treatment support, social support group support, legal, financial, housing and support groups in general. One of the first issues that a recovery coach deals with is where do I find mental health and addiction treatment? Because sometimes our clients either haven't been to treatment yet and need to go or have been to treatment and may need to go back. It's important that we understand what resources are out there and what levels of treatment are available. If our clients are coming out of residential treatment, they may not need to go back into residential. But if they're having difficulty dealing with some clinical issues, they may need to see an outpatient therapist one day a week in order to deal with those issues. In addition to working with you, the coach in maintaining their relapse prevention plan and practicing the skills that they learned in treatment, mental health and addiction treatment providers will provide diagnosis, assessment and treatment of mental health and addictive disorders. As coaches, we can assist with implementation of the plan. So even if somebody's actively in treatment, if you can get a release sign so you can talk to the clinician, you can see their treatment plan and ideally they should have a copy anyway, and you can help them implement what they came up with with their clinician. You can help them practice that and learn those skills between sessions with their clinician. Counselors provide talk therapy. Psychiatrists mainly monitor detoxification and prescribe medication, seeing the clients once a month or less. So if somebody is seeing a psychiatrist, that's great. You know, if they need their meds monitored, that's wonderful. Most psychiatrists, not all, but most psychiatrists. Psychiatrists don't see their clients on a weekly basis. There are various levels of treatment too. I talked earlier about residential and residential is 28 to 90 days, depending on the severity of the disorder. Once they get out of residential, ideally someone steps down to intensive outpatient, which is three to five days per week for three to four hours a day. So they're clean and they're so starting to get stable in their mental health and get their life skills under their belt. But they still need some help going from such a structured environment to dealing with life on life's terms. Many times, actually most times when people discharge from residential, they don't have the ability to step down to an intensive outpatient program, which is where a coach comes in really handy because a coach can touch base with the client. Two or three times a day, every day for the first 90 days after treatment. Outpatient therapy is when somebody goes one to five days a week for one hour per day. Another issue that's going to be really important for a lot of people in recovery is medication assistance. Medication is expensive, so if your clients cannot afford their medication, it's important for you to know that most pharmaceutical companies provide patient assistant programs. What you want to do is look up the name of the drug on the Internet and identify the manufacturer. Then you go to the manufacturer's website and find the patient assistant program link or type in the manufacturer's name and patient assistance, print out the form for the client to take to the doctor and we're going to try to do an example really quick right here. So we're going to move this over and we're just going to Google Seroquel so we see that Seroquel is available. We click on the Seroquel website and we find out that AstraZeneca is the provider. Now at the moment I don't want to get updates. The easiest way to find patient assistance programs you can get savings cards, but that's not what we're talking about. Easiest way to find patient assistance programs is to google the name of the pharmacy that makes it or the pharmaceutical company and patient patient assistance program which takes you to affordability. And then you can go to people without insurance, no cost to sign up for the program list of medicines, click here for eligibility and it walks you through getting the patient assistance program started. Most of the time it's a really short form that the doctor can fill out in no time flat. Other resources 12 step 12 step meetings are IRL, which means in real life and online. In order to find the online meetings go to in the rooms.com if you want to find a face to face meeting, Google AA or NA or whatever the 12 step program is that you're looking for, when and where, and it'll bring you to the website that has a listing of all their local meetings in your area. Smart Recovery is another support group that also has face to face meetings and online meetings. And you go to their website, which I've linked here, and you can look up to see where their face to face meetings are or when their next online meeting starts. Another source of support that a lot of people forget about as a resource is clergy. If someone that you're working with goes to a church or is spiritually minded, there might may be clergy in the local area that are willing to work with that person to Help provide some support. Legal assistance is another thing that often comes up. Whether it's divorce issues or child custody or misdemeanor felony issues, sometimes people need legal assistance. Pro bono legal services are offered by many, many lawyers with the American Bar Association. Google what's here. Pro Bono Legal Services listing of the American Bar association and it will take you to a website that has a list by state and locale of people who provide pro bono services. Attorneys. You're asking yourself why would an attorney do this? Attorneys do get continuing education credit toward providing pro bono legal services, so that's why they do it. If someone needs financial help for heating, for house, payments, for cars, whatever, the United Way is a great place to start. They are most familiar with the resources in your local area. Another place to look at is food stamps, TANF and Medicaid. And the Health and Human Services Department link is right here so you can look and see what it takes to qualify in your area for food stamps, TANF and Medicaid. The requirements differ based usually by state. Housing is another issue you may need to look at. Some people need to change people, places and things they don't want to go back to the same environment that they were living in again. The United Way at 211. Org will provide information about where to find low cost housing and how to get help with utilities, maybe even getting utilities turned on for a new house. And if you don't have any, credit and support groups can also be found@211.org. So if you don't remember anything else about where to find multidisciplinary resources, remember 211. Org. Dental help the Health and Human Services has a listing of places you can find low cost dental care. And there's also a website, freedentalclinics, usually that lists local providers of low cost and sliding scale dental care. You can find out about those resources and then call the clinic and find out what their requirements are. Health Insurance States who have opted into the Medicaid expansion now cover all low income adults, including those who don't have children. Unfortunately, Tennessee is not one of those states, but there are I believe 37 states that opted into the Medicaid expansion. Employment if your clients happen to have a felony conviction, it can be very difficult to get employed. The Federal Bonding program located at bondsforjobs.com provides a bond on the employee. So if the employee doesn't do what they're supposed to, there's a bond to cover the employer. So they're not out any money so they're not really taking a risk by having someone with a felony conviction on payroll. To find felony friendly employers, you can go to exoffenders.net There are a couple other resources, but they all kind of overlap one another. Exoffenders.net is really good website to start at. Now if they're bonded and or you know, they can get a bond, they find a felony friendly employer. They still need to get hired. And a lot of our clients have never written a resume. Some of them don't even know what they want to do for a career. So the career1stop.org is a great place to start for career exploration to find out about training opportunities. But there's also an entire section devoted just to resume writing. If your client cannot get employed for one reason or another because of depression, anxiety or physical conditions for which he or she may qualify for Social Security Disability, I've linked to the relevant sites on the Social Security Disability website and a couple of other sites that will help you understand what does it take if your client is depressed to qualify for Social Security Disability and to actually get approved. And the final part is the caveat. It's hard to get approved for Social Security Disability, so reading through these links will be helpful if you're assisting your client in applying for Social Security Disability Recovery involves More than Counseling Recovery involves helping the person stay on track 24 7, 365 counselors are great with dealing with mental health issues and even addiction issues, but implementing tools outside of the therapy session, dealing with life on life's terms and keeping that relapse prevention plan in play is really difficult for a lot of people, which is where a coach comes in handy. Coaches are also able to do a lot of the case management work that counselors often won't do or are prohibited from doing because they can't get reimbursed. People's basic needs include housing, the clothing, medical care and medication counseling, in some cases dental care, social support, and employment. Other legal needs may also include legal services and transportation. Again211.org if you can't remember anything else about where to find different resources and in order to find patient assistant programs to help your client get medication, find the name of the drug, figure out who makes it, Google the name of that pharmaceutical company plus the words patient assistant program and it will take you generally to the place on that company's website where they have the application for the patient assistance programs. Honestly, I have never had a client denied patient assistance when they have applied and I haven't ever had a problem with the doc filling out the one page sheet. Obviously, if the person really needs the medication. By working with a multidisciplinary team, coaches can help clients access needed resources. Recovery is about being happy and healthy emotionally, mentally, and physically. So we need to help people achieve health and wellness in all areas, which means doing more than just therapy during the first year of recovery from mental health or substance abuse. Anything that a coach can do to help clients learn how to reduce their stress and access resources will be a great help because you're freeing up energy for your client to use to deal with life on life's terms. And after all, that's exactly what we want them to be able to do.