Medication management services involve finding the best psychotropic medications to alleviate your symptoms so that you can get on with your life.  Dr. Walden provides this service in our clinic. With over 20 years of experience with patients taking these medications, he has a great deal of knowledge of the interactions, side effects, and costs.  He stays up to date on new medicines and pays attention to the financial cost of the medications as well as tries to work with insurance company formularies to find the optimum medication and dosage for you.  We also have nursing staff who can assist you with questions between appointments. 

Often, an insurance company will require that a candidate for a particular medical procedure be evaluated for mental health status prior to the procedure.  These evaluations are usually covered by the insurance company.  Our clinic regularly provides evaluations for medical clearance for such procedures as Lap-band surgery, chronic pain treatment, Hep-C treatment, and Spinal Cord Stimulator Implants.  These evaluations are usually done by Dr. Brown, but can be done by Dr. Walden if the patient can wait a little longer to get in for the appointment.

Psychotherapy in our clinic is usually done by our clinical psychologist, Dr. Phil Brown. Psychotherapy here is based on the cognitive-behavioral model.  Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a blend of Cognitive Therapy and Behavioral Therapy.  Cognitive Therapy focuses on the challenging negative thought patterns in order to alter unwanted behaviors or treat mood disorders.  Behavioral Therapy focuses on a person's actions and aims to change the unhealthy behavior patterns.  The combination of these two approaches gives the patient both understanding and a plan of action to address the thoughts and behaviors causing problems.

For more information, please see  http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/psychotherapies/index.shtml.  This website is the National Institute of Mental Health and discusses how CBT is used with patients with particular diagnoses.

The combination of medication management and psychotherapy is what the majority of our patients receive at our clinic.  The initial evaluation with Dr. Brown or Dr. Walden will determine whether or not the symptoms you are experiencing are significant enough to warrant medication intervention.  If this is the case, you will be seen by Dr. Walden for medical treatment and by Dr. Brown for psychotherapy.  If you already have a therapist outside of our clinic, we will certainly work in conjunction with him or her to help you. 

Some of our patients take medications that require monitoring by blood levels or their insurance company requires periodic monitoring of blood levels.  We do not do any lab tests on site.  Most of our patients go to BRMC or to other local labs to have their blood tests done.  We do require copies of those lab results for our records.  If this procedure is necessary to your treatment, be assured our staff will help you get it done.