Behavioral Health Care
Vu
Three years ago, Vu*, a single mother, was living with her sister's family. They wanted Vu and her children to move out. Not knowing where else to go, Vu contacted ACMHS after learning about us through the Vietnamese community.
ACMHS provides comprehensive, culturally appropriate behavioral health care services for children, adolescents, adults, and their families. Our clinical staff consists of highly trained, committed psychiatrists, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and social workers who are familiar with the needs of immigrant and refugee communities. Our staff also reflects the wide spectrum of age as well as immigrant/refugee cultural status of the API communities.
Multi-disciplinary, multi-lingual services teams provide a broad range of services :
- information and referral of clinical resources and how to access them
- assessment to determine whether mental health and/or substance abuse treatment services are needed
- psychiatric evaluation to establish a diagnosis and formulate a treatment plan tailored to the individual, with self-directed goals and action plan
- crisis stabilization to restore consumer’s wellbeing and coping skills
- individual and family therapy to identify and resolve consumer’s life and relationship issues
- social rehabilitation services and supportive counseling to develop consumer’s community living skills and improve self care
- consumer volunteer group as a means to empower participants in their recovery journey
- substance abuse treatment group to motivate group members to reduce or abstain from using substances
- clinical case management to arrange for appropriate services and supports based on an ongoing assessment of an individual’s needs
- family education on understanding and managing the mental illness of their loved ones
- medication therapy to prescribe psychotropic medication and monitor its effectiveness, with the goal of reducing or stabilizing various cognitive, mood and/or behavioral symptoms.
Services are provided at our Oakland office in Chinatown, designated public schools, and community sites.
Our new Asian ACCESS program, started in 2006, conducts outreach to the API communities to overcome cultural-based stigma around mental illness. ACCESS increases the API communities’ awareness and knowledge of mental health issues and availability of services. Professionally educated staff can perform assessments and referrals, and document unmet mental health needs in API communities, while peer counselors with mental health recovery experience play a vital role in the engagement of individuals and families new to the mental health system.