When you are dealing with a mental health issue, you want compassionate care from experienced professionals. If you have mild to moderate symptoms, outpatient therapy — seeing a mental healthcare provider once a week or so in their office — is usually a good choice.
In the Sutter Health network, compassionate and experienced professionals can help you resolve mental health issues and get back to living a full life, resuming the daily activities you once enjoyed. Our goal is to get an accurate diagnosis, get you started with appropriate treatment, and eventually help you manage your condition.
Evaluation and Diagnostic Services
We offer a variety of services to help diagnose your condition and create the most appropriate treatment plan. We use tools to assess your mental health including:
- Psychiatric evaluation — A thorough assessment of mental health status, looking at symptoms, behaviors, effects on school, work, and relationships, speech and language abilities, and your personal and family history of related disorders.
- Psychological assessment — Standardized question and answer tests that assess areas such as intelligence, cognitive functioning (ability to think, reason and speak), personality style, and level of depression or anxiety.
- Medication assessment — A review of all medications you are taking, including assessment of possible side effects and interactions.
- Addiction assessment — An examination of your current and past use of drugs and alcohol, withdrawal symptoms, effects on relationships, work, finances and health, your substance use treatment history, and your family history of addiction.
- Eating disorder assessment — A comprehensive psychological and medical review of eating patterns and body image issues and the effects on physical health.
Counseling and Therapy Services
Once your healthcare provider makes a diagnosis, he or she will talk with you about a treatment plan. We offer many different options.
Individual, Family and Group Counseling
We provide one-on-one therapy meetings with a counselor, therapist, social worker or other mental healthcare provider. Many people meet once a week with their therapist; depending on your needs, therapy might continue for just a few weeks or for several months.
At many of our locations, we also offer group counseling led by mental health professionals. Groups may focus on issues such as social and functional living skills, learning about mental health conditions and medications, relapse prevention skills, stress reduction techniques, managing symptoms, safety planning, and occupational and recreational therapy.
During family counseling, marriage and family therapists help partners and other family members explore issues that are preventing the family from functioning well, and learn skills and communication techniques that can improve relationships.
In your individual, family or group sessions, your healthcare provider might suggest some specific types of therapy:
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) — CBT focuses on how a person’s thoughts and beliefs influence their behavior and moods, and helps change their thinking to more healthy patterns.
- Mindfulness therapy — This type of therapy combines cognitive therapy with the principles of mindfulness (training the brain to deal with negative thoughts by accepting them, but not trying to change them or react to them).
- Occupational therapy — Can help patients regain daily living skills such as cooking, managing finances, personal hygiene and socializing.
- Recreational therapy — Activities such as art programs, pet therapy, drama therapy and others that help patients reduce symptoms, build confidence, learn to socialize better, improve physical health and develop other living skills.
Psychiatric Care
For some people with more serious or complex disorders, psychiatrists, medical doctors who specialize in mental health, can provide specialized care. Psychiatric treatment involves comprehensive evaluations, treatment plans and managed medication.
