Mental Health Conditions That Need Treatment
Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood. Over the course of your life, if you experience mental health problems, your thinking, mood, and behavior could be affected. Many factors contribute to mental health problems and include: Biological factors, such as genes or brain chemistry, Life experiences such as trauma or abuse, and Family history of mental health problems. Common conditions that require mental health treatment are:
Anxiety and Depression – Anxiety and depression tend to offer short-term relief when it feels like the world is closing in on you. If they take over, however, and you can’t function (or even get out of bed), it’s important to get help. You may realize that depression and anxiety run your life. You may know you need to get to the heart of the matter – you’re just not sure where to start. Let Omega Recovery help; our well-trained and caring team of clinicians can help you work through the pain, develop the tools and make the lifestyle changes that you need to live a healthier, happier life.
Trauma – The moment we experience trauma, our world is shattered. Our sense of safety and security disappears, leaving us feeling vulnerable, helpless, and paranoid. It does not matter if physical harm has taken place or not – any situation that leaves us scared or emotionally overwhelmed can be traumatic. It’s not what happened, it’s how it’s interpreted. The higher the anxiety, the higher the chances of traumatization–and the higher the likelihood of addictive self-medicating. At Omega Recovery, we use a variety of trauma-informed mental health treatment modalities to help the struggling trauma client not just survive–but thrive!
Codependency – At Omega Recovery, we believe that Codependency stems from growing up in a troubling environment. Our focus is on emotional dilemmas that form when people have tough childhoods. People who endured abuse or neglect during childhood tend to pick up harmful behaviors. Some classic examples include caretaking, misery addiction, control addiction, people pleasing and approval seeking. Codependent people can also suffer from obsessive over-analyzing and quickly wear themselves out. People who grew up under traumatizing circumstances can also fall victim to “catastrophizing”. They expect the worst to happen in any situation. Anything positive is negative, and disaster lurks around every corner. To them, this is perfectly normal. At Omega Recovery, by ushering them through our mental health treatment options with an understanding hand, we heighten their chances of breaking through the agonizing patterns that make up codependency.
Bipolar Disorder – Bipolar Disorder is a mental disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, concentration, and the ability to carry out everyday tasks. There are three types of bipolar disorder. All three types involve clear changes in mood, energy, and activity levels. These moods range from periods of extremely “up,” elated, irritable, or energized behavior (known as manic episodes) to very “down,” sad, indifferent, or hopeless periods (known as depressive episodes). This particular disorder requires mental health treatment early on to best help the struggling individual.
Borderline Personality Disorder – Borderline personality disorder is a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life. It includes self-image issues, difficulty managing emotions and behavior, and a pattern of unstable relationships. With borderline personality disorder, you have an intense fear of abandonment or instability, and you may have difficulty tolerating being alone. Yet inappropriate anger, impulsiveness and frequent mood swings may push others away, even though you want to have loving and lasting relationships.
Thought Disorder – Thought Disorder refers to the disorganized thinking as evidenced by disorganized speech. Specific thought disorders include derailment, poverty of speech, tangentiality, illogicality, perseveration, and thought blocking. Thought Disorder is a hallmark feature of schizophrenia but is also associated with other conditions including mood disorders, dementia, mania, and neurological diseases.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder – An anxiety disorder in which time people have recurring, unwanted thoughts, ideas or sensations (obsessions) that make them feel driven to do something repetitively (compulsions). The repetitive behaviors, such as hand washing, checking on things or cleaning, can significantly interfere with a person’s daily activities and social interactions. At Omega Recovery, by ushering them through mental health treatment options with an understanding hand, we heighten their chances of developing the tools and make the lifestyle changes that you need to live a healthier, happier life.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder – (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder that occurs in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster, a serious accident, a terrorist act, war/combat, rape or other violent personal assault. PTSD can occur in all people, in people of any ethnicity, nationality or culture, and any age. PTSD affects approximately 3.5 percent of U.S. adults, and an estimated one in 11 people will be diagnosed with PTSD in their lifetime. Omega Recovery uses a variety of trauma-informed mental health treatment modalities to help the struggling trauma client not just survive–but thrive!
Lack of Purpose or Meaning in One’s Life – For many, addiction is about escaping pain–physical or emotional. Yet for others, their addiction is all about filling a sense of emptiness that exists in their lives. These “existential crises” can be a result of retirement, divorce, illness, a death in the family…or merely a sense of purposelessness that leads to a life adrift and devoid of meaning. These are very often the conditions that lead to an endless cycle of self-medicating to fill the void of meaning and purpose that has developed.
What Omega Recovery Offers For Mental Health
At Omega Recovery, we offer our clients the latest in mental health treatment through our community integrated programs. Traditional mental health centers put the struggling individual in an artificial treatment bubble where it’s relatively easy to get well, but inevitably when that client leaves treatment, they are unprepared to deal with the stress of everyday life. In this “community integration” model the clients get to experience life; shopping in the supermarket, going on a barbeque, going to a doctor’s appointment, going on a job interview, all with staff supervision and clinical support that can help process any and all the feelings and emotions that can so often arise in early recovery. Omega Recovery is a holistically oriented counseling and wellness center that offers comprehensive services and treatment to clients and their families that are struggling with mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety and PTSD that oftentimes come together to create the perfect storm.
Omega Recovery’s mental health treatment philosophy embraces the notion that all people have the capacity to grow, flourish, and self-actualize once they break free from the grip of psychological and/or emotional challenges that have been negatively impacting their lives. We honor the concept of the Omega Point, a term coined by the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, which he used to describe the pinnacle of human consciousness and evolution. Thus, in order to help our clients reach their full potential, the licensed clinicians and certified counselors at Omega Recovery will use a variety of therapeutic techniques and evidence-based modalities to assist our clients in overcoming their challenges to feel “more comfortable in their own skin” so that they can meaningfully move forward in their lives, find their purpose and discover their true, authentic selves.
The Clinical Staff at Omega Recovery’s Mental Health Center
Our clinical staff comprises a multidisciplinary team of advanced degreed individuals. Our staff is professionally licensed or certified. In addition, many of our support staff that specialize in other types of therapeutic modalities (i.e. Reiki, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, Yoga, Neurofeedback, etc.) are trained and certified in their respective mental health treatment modalities. While not a requirement, Omega Recovery understands the critical importance of clinicians and staff are not only appropriately educated and credentialed, but who also embrace a strong recovery foundation in their own lives. Indeed, a foundation of recovery and extensive clinical experience offers the best clinical outcome opportunities for our client population.
Treatment Modalities:
Our staff are trained in a variety of evidence-based mental health treatment modalities. These interventions/strategies are practiced in individual and group therapy sessions and daily psychoeducational/didactic groups. They include:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – a treatment modality and a major aspect of our program. It is very common for individuals struggling with addiction to experience destructive and negative thinking or maladaptive thought patterns. Since our cognition affects our wellbeing, changing harmful thought patterns, which help clients, recognize their ability to practice alternative ways of thinking, and regulates distressing emotions and harmful behavior. As an evidence-based treatment modality, CBT is a proven effective treatment for substance use disorders, behavioral addictions (gambling, food, internet, sex), eating disorders, and specific mental health diagnoses. An active therapeutic modality, CBT is present-oriented, problem-focused, and goal-directed.
Motivational Interviewing (MI) – MI is a collaborative, therapeutic conversation between licensed clinicians and clients that addresses the common problem of ambivalence for change. As defined by William Miller, the creator of MI, its purpose is to strengthen the client’s own motivation for and commitment to change in a manner that is consistent with said client’s values. Therefore, rather than imposing or forcing changes, we “meet the client where the client is” and help him/her move toward his/her goals by drawing out and building his/her readiness to change.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) – Similar to CBT, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) helps clients identify, challenge, and replace their destructive thoughts and convictions with healthier, adaptive thoughts. Empirical studies demonstrate that this process incites emotional well-being and goal achievement.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) – DBT teaches clients how to regulate their emotions to reduce the self-destructive behaviors that derive from extreme, intense emotions. Primarily a skill-building approach, DBT focuses on the development of four key skill sets:
- Distress tolerance
- Emotion regulation
- Mindfulness (to live in the moment and fully experience emotions)
- Interpersonal effectiveness
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MSBR) – Developed by Dr. Jon Cabot-Zinn, MSBR is a sequential method that teaches the individual who is struggling with racing and impulsive thoughts how to be in the “here and now”. By focusing on the breath or on an object in the room, the client slowly becomes able to collapse their awareness into the present moment.
Seeking Safety (And Other Trauma-Focused Therapies) – Developed under a grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) by Lisa M. Najavits, Ph.D., Seeking Safety is a present-focused therapy that helps clients attain safety from trauma (including PTSD) by emphasizing coping skills, grounding techniques and education. This highly effective, research-based therapy has seven key principles such as helping clients attain safety in their thinking, emotions, behaviors, and relationships, by integrated trauma treatment and focusing on ideals to counteract the loss of ideals that is experienced in mental health issues.
EMDR – an evidence-based modality that has proven to be very effective in the treatment of trauma and PTSD, which are oftentimes the underlying issues that an addict is self-medicating. Thus, clinical staff trained in EMDR use this method to address and assist persons who have experienced trauma, which is significantly negatively impacting their recovery. EMDR incorporates elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy with eye movements; this form of stimulation is thought to “unfreeze” the brain’s information processing system in the amygdala and hippocampus that was frozen during or after the extreme stress of the traumatic event.
Recovery-Oriented Challenge Therapy – Sometimes also called Adventure Therapy or Outdoor Behavioral Health (OBH), this evidence-based technique is centered on an activity or “adventure” in which a clinical professional can actively engage with clients. Examples include: group challenges, outdoor activities, ropes courses, equine therapy, games, or other skill-building healing activities. Designed to help clients identify strengths and skills, build social support, strengthen their sense of focus of control, and address basic recovery issues, these groups assist with the development of self-care, boundaries, accountability, and trust. In addition, just being outdoors and immersed in nature has itself been proven to be therapeutic for a person stuck in a sedentary and addictive indoor lifestyle.
Experiential Therapies, i.e. Psychodrama – Many clients, especially younger clients, trapped in addictive and dysfunctional lifestyles, often benefit greatly from action-based and potentially transformative experiences. In psychodrama, the client can relive scenes from earlier in their lives that may have been turning points or “stuck” points in their addictive slide. The client is able to relive – and through the help of the clinician – change the toxic scene into one of breakthrough and empowerment.
In addition to these clinical modalities, Omega Recovery will also offer certain alternatives/holistic services that can help alleviate stress, anxiety, cravings, and promote overall wellness, all of which have been proven to help the distressed addict maintain a healthy mind-body-spirit balance which then aids in maintaining recovery:
- Meditation Groups
- Restricted Environmental Stimulus Therapy (R.E.S.T.) AKA “Flotation Therapy”
- Biofeedback
- Reiki
- Acupuncture and Acupressure
- Hypnotherapy
- Art Therapy/Creative Expression
- Yoga
Omega Recovery Offers The Best Treatment Options Available
At Omega Recovery, we do a thorough assessment to get to the underlying causes of the psychological distress for mental health treatment. If a sense of emptiness is the culprit, then beginning to work with a thoughtful clinician to find meaning and purpose in one’s life is the solution. We use Viktor Frankl’s “Logotherapy” to help drifting and lost Omega Recovery clients find their purpose and passion in their lives. Once a person is aligned with a sense of purpose, very often their lives become more manageable. If you or a loved one are seeking mental health treatment immediately, look to Omega Recovery for the best options available!
