Last fall, Charles began a doctoral program in integrated behavioral health. Because this term is a new one for many people, let’s take a moment to review what it means.
What is Integrated Behavioral Health?
Simply put, integrated behavioral health is the integrating of the physical side of healthcare with the mental, emotional, and behavioral side. For many years, these two types of healthcare have operated mostly separately. If you had a physical health problem, like high blood pressure, you would go to see your primary care physician. If you had an emotional, behavioral, or substance use problem, you would go and see a therapist. These services were so separate that your primary care physician might not even know that you were seeing a therapist because the therapist functioned independently from the primary care doctor, and they were usually located in separate places.
Integrated care aims to change that.
In the integrated care model, healthcare that addresses the whole person is provided by a collaborative team of professionals. This team includes clinicians from many different professions who may even share the same office space. This team closely collaborates to provide patients healthcare that encompasses the whole person, ideally all in one single place.
Why Change Things?
Because integrated care works better.
Studies have shown that integrated care improves outcomes for people suffering from depression and anxiety. It may also help people follow through with important lifestyle changes that will improve their outcomes for physical health diseases. Physicians have known for years that mental health affects physical health. The problem has been that we have not used that knowledge to improve the care that we provide.
If integrated care works better than our current system, making this change is a no-brainer.
How will Integrated Care Change Deerfield Counseling?
I don’t yet know exactly how integrated care will change things at our practice. We may create new programs focused on integrated care, we may integrate physical health professionals (like physicians or dietitians) into our team or we may do something else completely.
As I learn more about integrated care, I’ll be able to better understand the link between physical health and mental health and will also be better equipped to work with primary care physicians. I’ll gain a greater understanding of physical illness and how it impacts emotional health, and I’ll also gain a deeper knowledge of how medications can be used as tools to improve emotional health.
This knowledge will help me chart the future.
While I don’t know exactly what the future holds, I am confident that the steps we take to integrate care will improve outcomes for the people we serve, and outcomes are very important to us here at Deerfield Counseling.
While change can be scary, it can also be exciting. I’m excited to make the move to a more integrated model of care, and I hope that you will see the benefits, too!
