Q&A with Dr. Anita Red, Psychiatrist at OPI

Name: Anita Red, M.D.

Title: Adult, Adolescent, and Child Psychiatrist

What have you learned from the participants?

At OPI and OPI Intensive, young adults share many similar problems. As a result of their willingness to share, I get to witness them get better. For me, this reinforces hope. Participants often come in feeling hopeless and leave with a new outlook.

How have you motivated, inspired, and supported our participants?

I connect with them where they are at by putting myself in their shoes to really understand where they are coming from. Through this empathetic approach, I work to understand how we, both the participant I and all of us as clinical team, can help and make things better.

My style of medicine is to help educate people and then empower them to make decisions for themselves. For example, if there is a medication that might be effective, my style is to help the young adult learn about it. They themselves must then want to take it, and if that’s the case, I support them in doing so. I also discuss other non-medication approaches that can be supportive in conjunction with pharmacological treatment. It really matters that the participant believes in his or her treatment and is motivated.

Have you been inspired by our participants?

The reason I do this job is that not only am I professionally rewarded, but it is also very personally rewarding. It is just incredible to see someone at their lowest time make it through to the other side to some of their best times. They come from a hard place and make it through. They climb the mountain. It’s very inspiring. Psychiatry is not just a lab or blood value or a small snapshot – it’s looking at the whole person to see how we can help. Meds can help, but they are never the only solution.

What changes have you seen in participants?

HUGE! Especially at OPI. This is a very special place where people come because they are often completely or nearly completely impaired. Many times they have had trouble going to school or maintaining a job or living independently. They may have struggled with relationships at home or socially or personally.

To see the young adults who come through our doors have such severe impairments in all of these areas and then come to OPI to blossom into these people who are living successfully and independently is really amazing. During their stay with us, they develop and maintain their self-identity.

This immersive, intensive, residential experience is very different from the outpatient world where someone may be maintaining a job but coming in to get a medication every few months.  It is also very different from a hospital inpatient setting which is just about stabilizing.   OPI really is about changing someone. People come for a transformation.

 

At Optimum Performance Institute, we offer compassionate, clinically sophisticated intensive residential help for young adults who suffer from mental health issues, including genetic testing to determine the best course for medications as needed. Rather than a sterile, hospital-like environment, we offer beautiful accommodations in luxury apartments just outside of Los Angeles.  At OPI, we treat the individual, not the diagnosis.  We are a diverse community of passionate, highly skilled individuals, including Dr. Red, working together with you to help you find your joy and express it.   For more information on OPI residential programs and our measures to help young adults with mental health issues, call us at (888) 814-5985 or click HERE to submit an online form. We’ll be in touch promptly.