Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Anxiety & How We Treat It
Anxiety is when someone feels intense, excessive, and persistent feelings of worry and fear about situations that happen every day. It’s important to figure out the root of the anxiety before moving on to determine treatment options. Anxiety can sometimes be considered a comorbid diagnosis, going hand in hand with another type of mental health disorder. The treatment options for treating anxiety are the following:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy during mental health treatment in Mission Viejo focuses on combatting negative self-talk, which results from painful or traumatic experiences. Mental health professionals use this therapy technique to challenge this type of thought pattern. A subset of CBT is exposure therapy, which has someone diagnosed with anxiety slowly approach their anxiety or something they’re anxious about head-on in a controlled environment.
Medication
Medication isn’t always used for anxiety treatment but can help manage the symptoms that come with it. When someone decides to go on medication for anxiety, it’s important to find the right dosage and to figure out the best plan of action for minimal risks and side effects.
Trauma and PTSD & How We Treat It
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) happens from going through a traumatic event. Sometimes people diagnosed with PTSD can relive traumatic events through flashbacks. When experiencing a flashback, people usually feel intense sadness, anxiety, fear, or anger. PTSD is only one of the forms that trauma can come in. Some other types of trauma are being a natural disaster survivor, being sexually assaulted, childhood trauma, grief, and getting bullied. The typical symptoms of someone with trauma and PTSD are intrusion, avoidance, behavior and mood swings, and cognitive changes. It’s important to seek treatment if you suffer from trauma and PTSD. The treatment options offered for PTSD and trauma at Alter Behavioral Health are:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
PTSD and trauma patients usually get cognitive-behavioral therapy. Part of the cognitive behavioral therapy technique is rethinking the negative thoughts and beliefs that are tied to trauma. Another technique of CBT is using exposure therapy. This only is a beneficial treatment for people with trauma and PTSD when they get triggered by their trauma in a controlled setting. This is also how they can figure out in real-time when it happens how to cope with their trauma.
Medication
The common medications taken for PTSD and trauma are antidepressants, which are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Other medications might be given to help with anxiety, a symptom of PTSD and trauma. Sleeping medications also can be taken if you get sleep problems or nightmares from the trauma. It’s important to figure out the best plan of action for medication when treating PTSD from a mental health professional so you take the correct dosage and a medication that is helping treat your symptoms.
Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) & How We Treat It
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is essentially a deficiency of neurotransmitters that circuits the brain’s reward system. It gives people who have ADHD a lack of concentration. The shortage of neurotransmitters gives people with ADHD a harder time working for the same result as someone who doesn’t have ADHD. People who go untreated for ADHD have an increased risk of ending up in a car accident and more of a chance of smoking. Some other symptoms of ADHD are issues prioritizing and organizing tasks, being restless, being more impulsive, and having anxiety. The ways to treat ADHD are the following:
Pharmacotherapy
Since ADHD is a neurological problem, it needs a treatment focusing on medication to manage those symptoms directly affected by the neurotransmitter deficiency. Stimulant medications help with the deficiency of neurotransmitters, but it’s important to figure out what dose is best for you.
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy can help treat ADHD but it can’t be treated with just psychotherapy. It can be an issue if someone with ADHD only uses medication for treatment or only gets psychotherapy for treatment. You need psychotherapy and medication due to needing a long-term treatment plan to change your thoughts.
Schizophrenia & How We Treat It
Schizophrenia is when someone experiences reality in an altered form. Some of the symptoms might be audial or visual hallucinations, delusions, and struggling to think coherently. Once someone is diagnosed with schizophrenia, they need to start coming up with a treatment plan and starting treatment immediately. There are a few different ways to treat schizophrenia, which are the following:
Medication
The typical medicine given to patients who are diagnosed with schizophrenia is antipsychotic drugs. Sometimes side effects can happen, which is why patients must work with a medical professional to figure out the best dose and medication to put them on.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Medication is important in helping decrease schizophrenia symptoms, but cognitive-behavioral therapy makes it a more effective treatment when working hand in hand with medication. Going through this type of therapy as someone who was diagnosed with schizophrenia helps them achieve more consistent thought patterns. This also can help someone feel less stressed, which usually provokes a psychotic episode. Talk therapy can help patients understand the underlying reason for the stress and getting themselves so worked up, making them go through a psychotic episode.
Psychoeducation and Group Psychoeducation
Psychoeducation helps patients who got diagnosed with schizophrenia truly understand the mental health condition. Part of this treatment is destigmatizing the mental health disorder and fully comprehending what’s going on with someone with schizophrenia, so the patient’s loved ones can see what’s going on and support them during treatment.
If you or a loved one are suffering from a primary mental health disorder and need mental health treatment in Mission Viejo, the most important thing you can do is reach out. Alter Mental Health is here for you.
Borderline Personality & How We Treat It
Increased mood swings, impulsive actions, and stress characterize Borderline Personality Disorder. Borderline personality disorder symptoms include fear of abandonment in relationships, having intense and unstable relationships with people they are connected to, distorted view of themselves, self-harming, suicidal thoughts, intense feelings of anger, and feeling dissociated. Anyone with a family history of borderline personality disorder can be at risk of being diagnosed with it. Sometimes it has to do with biological factors and with your brain structure. There’s also more of a chance of you being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder if you experience trauma or a couple of unstable relationships. There are different treatments for borderline personality disorder offered at Alter Behavioral Health, which are:
Therapeutic Interventions
Therapy is one of the main treatments patients with borderline personality disorder partake in. The most common therapy technique mental health professionals use for people with borderline personality disorder is cognitive behavioral therapy. When going through the CBT process, patients will get to reprocess how they think and the patterns that come with it. Your therapist might also teach you skills to regulate your emotions.
Medication
There’s no specific medication that treats borderline personality disorder. People diagnosed with borderline personality disorder usually take medication for the symptoms. The medications taken usually help with alleviating symptoms of anxiety and depression. It’s important to figure out what medications would be best for your symptoms by discussing them with a mental health professional who can guide you through the process of getting medicated properly. Medication for symptoms is beneficial but shouldn’t be considered the only treatment going forward.
Family Therapy
Another type of therapy used for borderline personality disorder is family therapy. This is necessary for the patient diagnosed with borderline personality disorder as it’s important to have a strong support system in place and to have your loved ones understand what you’re going through. It’s also helpful to talk it out with a professional mediating the conversation with you and your loved ones to navigate your feelings and mood swings.
Dissociative Identity Disorder & How We Treat It
Dissociative identity disorder is when someone has more than two distinct personalities or identities, usually, it happens because of trauma. The dissociative state that a person diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder is from the body trying to cope with the trauma that happened to them. The person’s dissociative state makes them emotionally and mentally detached from the other personalities they have developed. Some causes of dissociative identity disorder are almost always linked to childhood trauma or stress. It is usually trauma directly from physical, sexual, or emotional abuse.
As they develop into adulthood, the complex information their brain is supposed to process struggles to do so, creating distinct differing personalities to cope with. This disrupts the process of figuring out who you are and finding your identity. The process of getting diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder is much harder than going through the treatment process. Mental health professionals must weed out the people seeking attention by mimicking the mental health disorder. People with DID try to hide their symptoms as best as possible and won’t admit to having a painful past. One of the main ways of diagnosing someone with DID is ruling out if they have any tumors, lesions, sleep deprivation, substance abuse, or a head injury. Then the mental health professional will go through the person’s medical history, religious beliefs to see if it explains their behavior. There are different treatments available for people diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, which are:
Inpatient
Since dissociative identity disorder can sometimes be harmful to the person diagnosed with it, the severity of it will decide whether or not they should seek inpatient treatment or not. Inpatient treatment lasts several days or weeks. It’s 24/7 care and is more of an intense treatment for people with severe dissociative identity disorder symptoms.
Outpatient
Outpatient care is the best treatment plan for people with dissociative identity disorder if their symptoms aren’t super severe and they don’t need 24/7 care. Since it’s not 24/7, they must treat in an outpatient facility for months or years. Unfortunately, people diagnosed with DID usually need a lifetime of treatment as new challenges can develop daily.
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy for DID usually consists of cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, and eye movement desensitization reprocessing techniques. Talk therapy in general will help the person with dissociative identity disorder separate their personalities and characteristics and what they represent for memories and trauma. Sometimes part of the therapy session it includes hypnosis or sedation to have the person become more present with how the personalities came to be. Therapists also usually speak directly to the different personalities to determine where the person is coming from.
Medications
The medications that usually treat DID are anti-psychotics and anti-anxiety treatments. It helps to treat accompanying symptoms but doesn’t cure dissociative identity disorder. Medication should be taken for the treatment of symptoms of dissociative identity disorder with other treatments as it’s only successful with talk therapy as well. You need both treatments to manage symptoms and overcome dissociative identity disorder.
Autism Support & How We Treat It
Alter Behavioral Health provides autism support for its patients, no matter how severe it is. When approaching treatment for autism, we know how it can vary from person to person. Some people are verbal while others are not. Everyone diagnosed with autism has specific needs that we can assess and help treat. We treat people diagnosed with autism with the following treatments:
Whole Person Diagnosis
The approach to autism treatment at Alter Behavioral Health is treating the whole person and not just the mental health disorder. The entry assessment will address any medical history, co-occurring mental health disorders, and anything else that might affect their mood and mental well-being.
Psychoeducation
Another aspect of treatment for autism is psychoeducation. This focuses on educating and understanding how autism affects a person’s life and getting the support they need from family and loved ones. It’s important to discuss how to cope with certain daily occurrences that are disrupted by being diagnosed with autism.
Community & Autism-Inclusive Spaces
It’s important to socialize and include people with autism in social activities. One of the common symptoms of autism is having a lack of interest in socializing or feeling uncomfortable in social settings. It improves the quality of their life when they find people with similar interests who can make friends and do activities together.
Why Choose Alter Behavioral Health in Mission Viejo
Alter Behavioral Health in Mission Viejo provides individualized care for each person, tailored to their mental health disorders. It’s a judgment-free facility and free of stigmatizing mental health. Mental health professionals take the time to handle every need and mental health issue. Alter Behavioral Health doesn’t just treat the conditions of the mental health disorders, they also treat the person. It’s important to seek help and find the right treatment for you if you suffer from mental health disorders. Finding mental health treatment in Mission Viejo at Alter Behavioral Health is just a call away at 866-647-2716.
Whether you’re seeking diagnosis or care for an existing diagnosis, Alter Mental Health is the place for you or your loved one.
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