2019 WCGG – Heart of Grady Award – Behavioral Health Services Team
I suffer from a schizophrenia in my first episode that was psychosis and I was 21 years old seemed like every five years I would have a relapse I had one foot in reality one foot in psychosis even though I was on medication and mm I was going down those whiskey’s effective at great Hospital it was kind of hard at first because dealing with the side effects of the medication I had a lot of hospitalization because of a cup of suicide or chumps for a long time I was locked up every year like like every literally every year he’s I’m in the hospital I’m in jail there’s a larger group of a population that that live with you know depression and anxiety but the people who really end up needing the most help are those living with psychotic disorders they need intensive intervention and they need it in the form of medications and form of case management therapy and Grady does all of those things in a comprehensive way that that few other providers offer Grady behavioral health services is the largest academic and community mental health center in the southeast administering more than 100,000 patient visits consultations and admissions each year with cases ranging from opioid addiction to chronic and severe mental illnesses the department employs more than 250 caregivers one of those is crystal a certified peer specialist who has faced her own challenges with addiction I am also a person in long-term recovery from my mental health diagnosis and my substance abuse use a lot of those resources that I provide to the patients here I had to use those myself a lot of the life skills that I helped them with I had to use myself as well providing research treatment and community outreach for adults with mental illness Grady has stepped in to fill a critical need Grady’s behavioral health service line he is really the last resort for people with serious mental illness I didn’t want to go through the trauma anymore I didn’t want to put the stress on my family anymore I wanted a successful life oh look okay my long wait for mom topic to myself thinking that I’m again coming so just a mellow head person but I’m doing better great it was my lifeline my last lifeline to be honest so you know if it wasn’t for great idea no telling where I’d be right now many of these positive outcomes can be traced back to Grady’s integrated approach to behavioral health and primary care a comprehensive approach that addresses overall wellness of the patient we have behavioral health clinicians assigned to each Grady neighborhood clinic as well as the clinics inside the hospital and then we have a psychiatrist as a part of that behavioral health team assigned and so it’s a win-win situation because patients then can get access to care right in their neighborhood and right in their medical care home we have many patients who come for example for medical care who say they first have a mental illness and are often that’s the immediate thing that first comes up and are not even recognized to have other medical illnesses and then I’ve said many times just because you have something like schizophrenia doesn’t mean you can’t have appendicitis but you’d be amazed at how many times people’s abdominal pain is ignored because they simply reflect it to have a mental illness I wasn’t a person who visited doctors other than my psychiatrist I hadn’t had a primary care in a long time since a pediatrician and so I wasn’t aware that I was having physical ailments and they found knows that Grady they treated them and now I’m working toward 100% patients are often feel a little stigmatized if they have to go to a psychiatric clinic but if you walk in and it says health care or primary health then they feel more comfortable and they can get the care that they need and follow up they can come back for treatment and get their blood pressure monitored and also maybe deal with whatever they need for their depression another area of success for Grady behavioral health has been the implementation of the assertive community treatment program or a CT its goal care for the patient outside the confines of a clinic instead of requiring the patient to come to us we go to them and so we are see a patient wherever they are that can be in a shelter that can be out in the park and so the idea though is that we really want to meet them where they are introduce them to a behavioral health team because it really is a team approach and to follow them and help improve the quality of their treatment and the quality of their life we’re changing lives were changing people now become a peer specialist and they’ve talked to me about actually working for that team that I was a part of we have extremely skilled and talented people doctors nurses case management staff therapist but most importantly all of these people could be making more money somewhere else they could have gone into a different field but they’re working with individuals who are hard to serve they get spit on sometimes they could kick they get punched and they keep coming back to work every day they clearly have a passion for the people we’re serving we’re honored to receive this award for all the hard work that the members of the Behavioral Health Team provide to patients and their families I also want to thank all of our partners in this our great faculty the tremendous staff at Grady and our partners at Morehouse working together we’ve created something that’s unique and something that’s truly special and something that I’m very proud of you
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