business milestone

Busting the Myths of Mental Health

By Linda Lienhart

ollaborative Solutions Institute (CSI) is a Central Illinois, notfor-profit professional practice celebrating 20 years of working towards their vision of a society acting with civility toward each other at all levels of social organization from families to organizations to communities to the total society. One of the handouts on the table in the lobby of Collaborative Solutions Institute is titled myth busting. During the first few minutes of our interview with Cheryl Gaines, Julia Bozarth and Jim Strauss, the professional counselors of CSI, some myths were definitely busted. If you think that an office inside an old building sitting next to the county jail is going to be dull and drab, think again the CSI office at 200 West Front Street is pleasant and beautifully decorated. If you think counselors who see troubled people day after day are going to be serious and cynical, think again Julia and Cheryl are very positive, bright, confident, witty, and caring. If you think counseling and therapy is just for people with severe issues, think again CSI offers motivational talks
Page 38 Healthy Cells Magazine Bloomington May 2013

and assistance with minor family problems and workplace issues as well as dealing with serious mental illness. Regardless of the severity of the situation, therapists at CSI focus on civility a word that can mean politeness, courtesy, good manners, respect, or consideration. In their counseling endeavors, Julia, Cheryl, Jim and the rest of the staff, are Licensed Clinical Professional Counselors, and they are all about civility. The OPTIONS program focuses on problems within the family, especially with regard to teenagers and college students. Numerous young people face problems with volatile behavior, difficulty in academic and social situations at school, eating disorders, or cutting. Parents in Bloomington/Normal looking for help for an adolescent often have difficulty finding someone who is qualified to deal with those issues and who will see patients under the age of sixteen. Julia, Jim and Cheryl are definitely qualified. They work with young clients referred by doctors, guidance counselors, and area mental health agencies that

deal with teenagers. While many of those agencies do social work, we do therapy, said Julia. She explained her range of clients using a scale of one to ten. We have some tens who come in with some very severe, well-developed issues such as eating disorders or cutting, and we have some ones and twos children of parents who are coming in proactively to help ward off problems in the early stages." While many of their clients are teenagers, CSI realizes there is a great need for adult counseling and coaching. The SOLUTIONS program works well for adults and couples. In this program, the counselors treat depression, anxiety disorder, substance abuse, and adult ADHD. The counselors at CSI bust another myth about counseling its not just for people who have a medically diagnosed problem. Adults may come to the SOLUTIONS program for premarital counseling, for selfesteem issues related to returning to work after being a stay-at-home mom, or to develop positive relationships in the work environment. Also, Cheryl and Julia sometimes take this program outside the walls of CSI, doing corporate coaching and motivational speaking. In addition to the services that focus on life enhancement and enrichment, AVERT is an important program that deals with domestic violence. The counselors at CSI often meet with youth or adults who have broken the law, especially laws dealing with assault and battery, but they emphasize that they strive to treat the person not the behavior. When a client has committed a violent act in a family situation, the counselors at CSI dont assume the person is just bad or mean. They believe that while the violence must be stopped, they look for a contributing mental health issue, such as depression, attention deficit disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder or anxiety, which might have fueled the behavior. Julia pointed out that they are multi-systemic therapists.

"We know that treating the volatile personality is important to protecting others. We spend time on communication skills development. They see people who have been charged with domestic violence and come to them by referral from the court system, and they see people who choose to participate in the AVERT program because they recognize they have a volatile personality. This program also treats people who engage in violence as a result of substance or alcohol abuse. CSI counsels people who are self-medicating their mental illness with drugs/alcohol or who are voluntarily trying to stop such self- medication. They often work in conjunction with drug and alcohol treatment programs and psychiatrists. As the name suggests, the AVERT program helps people avert violence. According to Cheryl, their goal is to intervene early and keep people out of institutions such as jails and hospitals. Clients can participate in any of these highly effective programs for a couple of weeks or for over a year. Sometimes they meet in groups, sometimes one on one. Insurance programs often pay for the counseling sessions, and in cases where insurance will not pay, the clients are put on a sliding scale to make the therapy affordable for them. No matter which program or which payment plan, the goal of the CSI counselors is to model respect and civility. According to Cheryl, you cant do that if the people trying to teach you arent doing it. After just a few minutes in conversation with Julia and Cheryl, it was evident that they consistently achieve their goal of providing building blocks for civility. For more information, you may contact Collaborative Solutions Institute at 309-828-2860 www.collaborativesolutions.org.

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May 2013 Bloomington Healthy Cells Magazine Page 39