IMG_0171

Partners in Treatment Conference Interview

Partners in Treatment

Today we’re talking to Michelle Dabach, LMFT who works in admissions at OPI about her experience at the Partners in Treatment Conference that she attended.

Jon:              Hi, Michelle. Thanks for taking the time to interview for us here on our blog. Why don’t you tell us what the conference looks like. Who’s there, the general lay of the land.

Michelle:             There are a lot of residential treatment centers here with whom we have worked directly, either by sending referrals or receiving referrals from. We’re learning a lot about family systems and what to do with other members of the family when one member has a mental illness and needs treatment. We’ve only had 2 lectures up until now.

Jon:                        That sounds like a really interesting topic. Why don’t you go into that a little more? What are some of the things you’ve learned about family interaction?

Michelle:             There’s this big move towards starting to help siblings, because siblings of folks with mental illnesses often get overlooked, and they often get put in the position of care giving and their needs end up not being met. How do we tend to the siblings of mentally ill clients and help them become their own person again, instead of a care giver of their sibling who is ill?

Jon:                        That sounds like a really important, overlooked thing that programs like ours might not have addressed before. Were there ideas thrown out on how to approach something like that?

Michelle:             The director from Hanbleceya actually gave the lecture on sibling needs and she said that during her research, there wasn’t a lot out there. I think it’s a subject that needs to be approached more by clinicians in the field. People need to start looking into this and exploring how to best service this population, since they are often overlooked. It’s something that I know our therapists at OPI try to work with when working with the entire family of our participants.

Jon:                        Great. You’ve seen this actually manifest as a real issue at OPI?

Michelle:             I’ve seen it indirectly, in the admissions calls that we get. There’s often a problem with not only the identified patient, but the family as a whole, siblings included.

Jon:                        Have you noticed anything that other programs are doing differently at the event than we are?

Michelle:             The great thing about the other programs that I’ve seen here are there are programs who don’t do exactly what we do. It’s actually a really beneficial relationship that we have going on. We’ve seen a lot of substance abuse and detox centers, a lot of mental health and eating disorder centers, but nobody who quite does what we do in helping young adults launch successfully into the real world. It’s really great since they meet needs we can’t service and vice versa — they can refer to us and we can refer out to them.

Jon:                        Kind of like co-opetition instead of competition, correct?

Michelle:             Exactly.

Jon:                        That’s nice. You’re building more relationships. How many lectures do they typically have at a conference like this? It’s a 1 day thing, isn’t it?

Michelle:             This one is a 1 day conference, and it’s actually pretty small in comparison to some of the others. They have 5 lectures scheduled for today. The next one’s actually starting in a half an hour, and then they will have a lunch break and have 2 more in the afternoon.

Jon:                        Are you going to try and attend the next lecture?

Michelle:             Absolutely. I don’t know what it’s going to be on at this moment, but I’ll find out fairly soon.

Jon:                        Okay, no problem. Do you feel like listening to that previous lecture was something that we might want to bring up at OPI and develop internally?

Michelle:             Absolutely. I think if we could incorporate sibling treatment into what we already provide, that will just put us ahead of the curve.

Posted in and tagged