Experts at Carle Health say the need for behavioral health and addiction recovery services is greater now than ever before.
Data from the National Institute of Mental Health estimates more than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness. Additionally, the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health recently found that more than 16% of Americans aged 12 or older battled a substance use disorder in just the past year.
Carle Health is committed to providing high quality behavioral health and addiction recovery services. Across the system, passionate and dedicated specialists are working every day to improve the lives of patients and care for those in crisis.
Greater Peoria: The Trillium Place Mobile Crisis Unit
In the Greater Peoria service area, Bernard Butler and James Harryman lead the mobile crisis response unit within Trillium Place, an affiliate of Carle Health.
Since 1975, the 24/7, grant-funded service goes directly into the communities it serves and provides support for people in crisis.
“Our team is here to help. Whether someone is experiencing a mental health crisis with anxiety or depression or a substance related concern, we are here to support them,” Butler, who leads the mobile crisis initiatives in Peoria County and its surrounding communities, said.
The mobile crisis response team – which consists of behavioral health experts and recovery support specialists – aids in a variety of response situations.
Individuals in crisis can receive support by phone and at their home. Mobile crisis response can also assist in transporting patients to where they need to go, such as an emergency department, crisis bed, detox program or other appropriate resource.
The unit responds to hundreds of calls per month through its own designated call center as well as the 988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline and local police dispatch.
“One of our main goals is to engage with the individual that may be in crisis and initiate an interaction that is meant to lessen the anxiety or discomfort someone may be experiencing,” Harryman, who manages the initiative in Tazewell County and its surrounding communities, said.
“We also have a close relationship with the police and our staff carry police radios. We are often contacted by our local dispatch to respond to a location to offer assistance,” Butler added.
Butler and Harryman say many of the situations they respond to involve individuals experiencing schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other related crises.
Harryman adds the goal of mobile crisis response is to lessen the number of individuals experiencing crisis and better serve them in their community to meet their specific needs.
“Our role is to support, engage and offer compassion regardless of what the individual might be experiencing,” Harryman said.
“Everything we do is to help a person better understand what they are going through, resolve it and realize that there is hope in recovery,” Butler added.
Champaign-Urbana: Expansion of addiction recovery services
In the past six years, Carle Health’s Addiction Recovery Center (ARC) in the Champaign-Urbana Service Area has hired additional clinicians, medical and psychiatric staff to expand and serve roughly 10-times more community members than before.
The Center provides a comprehensive array of resources including medication assisted treatment, psychiatric services and harm reduction strategies to meet individuals at any stage of their recovery journey.
“We have a wide range of ways to treat co-occurring disorders of mental health and substance abuse,” Todd Beard, Addiction Recovery Center manager said. “We have increased our number of licensed providers who can treat these disorders significantly.”
Beard emphasizes an important goal of the ARC is to use a non-stigmatizing, flexible approach that encourages self-reflection and exploration of substance use for each patient.
One such method is motivational interviewing, where specialists work with the patients to develop an advanced understanding of their stage of recovery and outline their journey in a way that works best for them.
“With motivational interviewing, we meet you where you are,” Beard said. “We stay with people who used to be excluded from treatment - substance abuse is hard to stop and hard to not go back to.
Our department works hard to continue to work with people who struggle with this and help them cut down, cut back and eventually work their way into abstinence. We don’t give up on those people.”
The ARC also includes a group of substance use navigators – also known as the “SUN” team – who work with patients in the hospital and help them navigate and address their struggles with addiction.
The SUN team consists of state-certified peer recovery specialists who, themselves, are in a long-term, sustained recovery journey.
“They are amazing,” Beard said. “They have worked with more than 1000 people in the last year-and-a-half. Some of those patients don’t come directly to our department, but instead get involved in mutual support within their community.”
Beard is looking forward to further expanding services in the region by incorporating a mobile crisis unit like the initiative Butler and Harryman lead in Greater Peoria.
Bloomington-Normal: Community outreach
In addition to offering inpatient and outpatient behavioral health and addiction recovery services at Carle BroMenn Medical Center, Carle Behavioral Health in Bloomington prioritizes community outreach to educate, raise awareness and offer resources across the region.
Experts in the service area say there is a great need for behavioral health and addiction recovery resources, and offering opportunities for community engagement is a huge first step in providing services.
“We need to keep discussing mental health and sharing our thoughts, feelings and experiences to decrease stigma and make people feel less alone,” Carle child/adolescent psychologist Burgundy Johnson, DO, said.
On Tuesday, May 7, Dr. Johnson teamed up with Carle psychiatrists Rachel Immen, MD, and Alyssa Wood, DO, to offer a Community Conversation on Mental Health at Illinois Wesleyan University.
Dozens of community members met to discuss the need for services in the region and the immense benefits mental and psychiatric healthcare can provide for people who are struggling.
“People who attend our events should leave feeling more hopeful about mental illness and our local community because we do have reason to hope,” Dr. Johnson said.
These are just a few of the many efforts Carle Health is making to ensure quality behavioral healthcare and safety for its patients.
To learn more about these initiatives and other behavioral health and addiction recovery services throughout the Carle Health system, visit this link.
Data from the National Institute of Mental Health estimates more than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness. Additionally, the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health recently found that more than 16% of Americans aged 12 or older battled a substance use disorder in just the past year.
Carle Health is committed to providing high quality behavioral health and addiction recovery services. Across the system, passionate and dedicated specialists are working every day to improve the lives of patients and care for those in crisis.
Greater Peoria: The Trillium Place Mobile Crisis Unit
In the Greater Peoria service area, Bernard Butler and James Harryman lead the mobile crisis response unit within Trillium Place, an affiliate of Carle Health.
Since 1975, the 24/7, grant-funded service goes directly into the communities it serves and provides support for people in crisis.
“Our team is here to help. Whether someone is experiencing a mental health crisis with anxiety or depression or a substance related concern, we are here to support them,” Butler, who leads the mobile crisis initiatives in Peoria County and its surrounding communities, said.
The mobile crisis response team – which consists of behavioral health experts and recovery support specialists – aids in a variety of response situations.
Individuals in crisis can receive support by phone and at their home. Mobile crisis response can also assist in transporting patients to where they need to go, such as an emergency department, crisis bed, detox program or other appropriate resource.
The unit responds to hundreds of calls per month through its own designated call center as well as the 988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline and local police dispatch.
“One of our main goals is to engage with the individual that may be in crisis and initiate an interaction that is meant to lessen the anxiety or discomfort someone may be experiencing,” Harryman, who manages the initiative in Tazewell County and its surrounding communities, said.
“We also have a close relationship with the police and our staff carry police radios. We are often contacted by our local dispatch to respond to a location to offer assistance,” Butler added.Butler and Harryman say many of the situations they respond to involve individuals experiencing schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other related crises.
Harryman adds the goal of mobile crisis response is to lessen the number of individuals experiencing crisis and better serve them in their community to meet their specific needs.
“Our role is to support, engage and offer compassion regardless of what the individual might be experiencing,” Harryman said.
“Everything we do is to help a person better understand what they are going through, resolve it and realize that there is hope in recovery,” Butler added.
Champaign-Urbana: Expansion of addiction recovery services
In the past six years, Carle Health’s Addiction Recovery Center (ARC) in the Champaign-Urbana Service Area has hired additional clinicians, medical and psychiatric staff to expand and serve roughly 10-times more community members than before.
The Center provides a comprehensive array of resources including medication assisted treatment, psychiatric services and harm reduction strategies to meet individuals at any stage of their recovery journey.“We have a wide range of ways to treat co-occurring disorders of mental health and substance abuse,” Todd Beard, Addiction Recovery Center manager said. “We have increased our number of licensed providers who can treat these disorders significantly.”
Beard emphasizes an important goal of the ARC is to use a non-stigmatizing, flexible approach that encourages self-reflection and exploration of substance use for each patient.
One such method is motivational interviewing, where specialists work with the patients to develop an advanced understanding of their stage of recovery and outline their journey in a way that works best for them.
“With motivational interviewing, we meet you where you are,” Beard said. “We stay with people who used to be excluded from treatment - substance abuse is hard to stop and hard to not go back to.
Our department works hard to continue to work with people who struggle with this and help them cut down, cut back and eventually work their way into abstinence. We don’t give up on those people.”
The ARC also includes a group of substance use navigators – also known as the “SUN” team – who work with patients in the hospital and help them navigate and address their struggles with addiction.
The SUN team consists of state-certified peer recovery specialists who, themselves, are in a long-term, sustained recovery journey.
“They are amazing,” Beard said. “They have worked with more than 1000 people in the last year-and-a-half. Some of those patients don’t come directly to our department, but instead get involved in mutual support within their community.”
Beard is looking forward to further expanding services in the region by incorporating a mobile crisis unit like the initiative Butler and Harryman lead in Greater Peoria.
Bloomington-Normal: Community outreach
In addition to offering inpatient and outpatient behavioral health and addiction recovery services at Carle BroMenn Medical Center, Carle Behavioral Health in Bloomington prioritizes community outreach to educate, raise awareness and offer resources across the region.
Experts in the service area say there is a great need for behavioral health and addiction recovery resources, and offering opportunities for community engagement is a huge first step in providing services.
“We need to keep discussing mental health and sharing our thoughts, feelings and experiences to decrease stigma and make people feel less alone,” Carle child/adolescent psychologist Burgundy Johnson, DO, said.
On Tuesday, May 7, Dr. Johnson teamed up with Carle psychiatrists Rachel Immen, MD, and Alyssa Wood, DO, to offer a Community Conversation on Mental Health at Illinois Wesleyan University.
Dozens of community members met to discuss the need for services in the region and the immense benefits mental and psychiatric healthcare can provide for people who are struggling.
“People who attend our events should leave feeling more hopeful about mental illness and our local community because we do have reason to hope,” Dr. Johnson said.
These are just a few of the many efforts Carle Health is making to ensure quality behavioral healthcare and safety for its patients.
To learn more about these initiatives and other behavioral health and addiction recovery services throughout the Carle Health system, visit this link.
Categories: Culture of Quality
Tags: addiction, awareness, behavioral, carle, health, mental, month, recovery