Innovative Approach to Mental Health Treatment
the recovery-based engagement support team project are our best is an Innovations funded project designed to help individuals living in the community with untreated mental illness the teams are multi-disciplinary in nature and they are made up of drug and alcohol counselors nurses peer and family advocates as well as mental health specialists we also have clinical therapists assigned to the team and they specifically work with the families of these mellal individuals to help them um understand the nature of mental illness to educate them about resources to help uh them cope with their mentally ill loved ones as well as to provide therapy in their homes or in an environment that’s comfortable for them my brother he is um diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia my experiences were um very hard to deal with on my own Jacob has a long history of mental health illness started when he was quite Young when he became an adult um we were kind kind of at a loss we didn’t know where to go not knowing if he was suffering from mental illness or even like a drug addiction was the initial problem it was very stressful and it’s been it’s impacted the family quite a bit I would watch him in agony sometimes he couldn’t sleep and he would just curl up in the couch in a fetal kind of position this whole experience has has changed every moment of your life one of the um barriers with chronic mental illness is access to Supportive Services actually getting to their Clinic appointments taking medications when those things don’t take place you end up with individuals with um substance abuse with homelessness so how ourbest works and how their engagement works is their client is identified by The Hope team during our Outreach efforts uh we find somebody who is having some issues behavioral health issues mental health issues we contact the rbest team and one of the team members will actually ride out with us in the field and engage that person right there whether it be on the side of of a business in their tent in a field somewhere where they can actually do a one-on-one evaluation we can take that person and get them the help that they need we’re no longer receiving calls for service so having our best there it um it really does it prevents emergencies in my in my opinion those individuals that are homeless and mentally ill are usually some of the tougher to get linked to mental health services so we’ll go out and use the Elite model with those individuals and just befriend them through that relationship we can encourage them to consider mental health treatment giving them some support being there for them helping them navigate the process navigate through the system I’ve gotten them into Services where they haven’t utilized Hospital services in over a year this is a song I wrote actually it’s um it’s about the problem that I had with my brother the county was was pivotable pivotal before and and and and ongoing a crucial role to getting us in the right direction I had people who understood what was going on knew you know what I was going through and cared I’m very grateful for this program I think this is a life-saving program um it saved my life I’ve heard people say I wouldn’t have done this if it weren’t for you guys I wouldn’t have been able to make it this far some really good success stories where people who didn’t want to talk to us before were actually engaged by our best got into the system and they got them to a what you almost call a manageable point to where they can make good decisions it’s been it’s been so advantageous things people that are experiencing behavioral health issues there’s so much stigma around it and so sometimes people want to push that experience away instead of say you know what we have in common this health condition that our family members share or that maybe we share together and that’s empowering and then having those feelings of being helpless and even moments of feeling hopeless but knowing that there’s help out there knowing that recovery does happen knowing that you can have support for yourself and for your loved ones is [Music] priceless really appreciate the assistance that um your group has provided for us CU it’s been a otherwise we wouldn’t have known I don’t know where we would have been now without that bridge to find those things out and really tailor services to their needs we’re going to end up in a situation where we have a bunch of statistics and we have a bunch of family members who just step [Music] [Applause] away the whole reason why Arvest is [Music] needed
San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health (DBH), through it’s Recovery Based Engagement Support Team (RBEST) project, provides services throughout San Bernardino County to mentally ill individuals who are non compliant and/or resistant to psychiatric care. For services or more information, call (909) 421-9452.
Original song written and performed by Yosef Harise.
Data provided by DBH Research and Evaluation.