Adults

What is ACT?

Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is a way of delivering a full range of services to people who have been diagnosed with a severe mental illness or co-occurring disorder. ACT provides supports to help people maintain their independence in the community. The goal of ACT is to keep people out of the hospital and help them to have a life that isn’t dominated by their mental illness.

What makes ACT Different?

ACT is a team approach to service delivery. An ACT team is made up of practitioners who have training and experience in psychiatry, nursing, social work, substance abuse treatment, and employment. Rather than sending people to different agencies or providers for services, members of the team work closely together to provide individuals with a highly integrated array of services that best meet their needs.

Teams provide whatever services and supports an individual may need for as long as they are needed. As individuals progress toward their recovery goals, team members are in touch less often but continue to be available if a need for additional support arises.

What is Case Management?

A Case Manager is a staff person who helps write an individual plan of service and makes sure that the services are delivered. Their role is to listen to a person’s goals and to help find the services and resources that will help achieve the goals. A case manager assists individuals with linking to services, planning services, advocacy, monitoring services and coordination to achieve positive outcomes.

What is Community Integration Services?

Community Integration Services (CIS) provides life skill development, sensory integration and socialization opportunities for adults with intellectual/developmental disabilities in both a classroom and community setting. Typically, individuals who receive CIS services benefit from positive behavioral programming in a highly structured, lower stimulus environment. Individuals who receive CIS services are those who exhibit the most serious of challenging behavior and experience the greatest impairment in functioning. CIS utilizes a multidisciplinary approach with individualized treatment plans that promote greater choice, meaningful activities, increased self-sufficiency and community participation.

What is Community Living Supports

Community Living Supports provides individualized services that make it possible for people with intellectual / developmental disabilities or serious mental illness to live independently. The amount of support provided is tailored specifically to each individual and can involve as little as one or two hours a month to as much as several hours each week to assist with such things as meal preparation and laundry.

What is the Creative Arts Program?

The arts help people break through the stigmas surrounding mental health and substance use disorders — and help people recover. The arts help people with developmental disabilities build new life skills.

Art Classes

Learning to draw and paint can be a challenge - but it can also be a lot of fun. Painting allows you to express your thoughts and feelings without words, providing you a unique voice with which to communicate with the world, all the while developing your creativity and imagination. If you would like to learn drawing and painting techniques, or how to do pottery in a friendly and supportive environment, the CMH art class is right for you!

Drama Classes

Acting is a great way to build self-confidence, improve social skills, work with others as a team, improve memorization, practice relaxation techniques, communicate better with others, think creatively, and have fun. Drama class allows students to work on social skills in a safe, fun, environment, that is different than most other classes. Participants will have an opportunity to learn acting skills on the stage and film.

Participants in the drama class also have an opportunity to participate in the CMH Players, a theatre troupe which includes individuals receiving community mental health services, local community actors, and CMH staff.

Since 2005 the CMH Players have presented 20 plays with mental health themes to thousands of people. These productions have decreased stigma and provided individuals receiving services an outlet for their creative talents. The CMH Players also create original films and skits with mental health themes.

Whether you live to be a “strutting player” on the stage or prefer the anonymity of working back stage, drama class offers a wonderful opportunity to learn about the theatre. For those with the acting bug participants have the opportunity to learn basic to advanced methods of performing on stage, rehearsing and auditioning. For those interested in learning about what happens behind the curtain, there are opportunities to learn about prop design, set design, costume design, sound, and lighting. Time will also be available to help prepare participants interested in auditioning for or volunteering with CMH and community theatre productions.

Writing Classes

Why do people write? They write to share their hopes and dreams, failures and successes, hates and loves, or simply to share their thoughts. They write because they have a story to tell, either their own or one bubbling up from their imagination.

Writing class participants have an opportunity to learn how to write poetry, short stories, song lyrics, memoirs, journals, plays, and screenplays. If you have a story to tell, want to explore different types of writing, or just want to improve your writing skills, the friendly and supportive environment of the CMH writing class is right for you.

What is Dialectical Behavioral Training (DBT)

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a treatment for individuals diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), a serious mental illness characterized by difficulty regulating emotions, thoughts, behaviors, self-perception, and interpersonal relationships. It is an “evidence-based” therapy, meaning it is based on research studies that provide statistical evidence of its effectiveness. DBT is currently considered the most effective treatment available for individuals with BPD.

Participation represents a year-long commitment on the part of the individual joining the DBT program. Participants agree to weekly individual therapy, to attend weekly skills group meetings (2 hours), and to learn and practice the four skill sets mentioned earlier. They may also be linked to a peer support, who assist individuals in learning skills and applying them to everyday life. Participants also agree to accept coaching calls on a 24-hour a day, seven days a week basis. The program begins with a four to six week orientation where the requirements and responsibilities of the individual receiving services are clearly explained.

What is Health Matters?

The Health Matters Program is for adults with Intellectual Disabilities that includes Exercise, Nutrition, and Health Education components. The goals of the program are to improve fitness and increase knowledge about healthy lifestyles. The health education classes consist of activities helping participants to understand their attitudes towards health, exercise, and food. Exercises are utilized that are fun and help participants set fitness goals. There are no health restrictions on who can apply, but people with a health concern are a priority. Participation requires a medical clearance form signed by a participant’s doctor.

What is Home and Community Based Services (HCBS)

HCBS is Home and Community Based Services with the following main components:

• Individual rights: includes privacy, dignity, respect and freedom.
• Full participation in community life: includes finding a job, working amongst those without disabilities and taking part in the community to the same degree of access as other individuals in their community.
• Independence in making life decisions: includes making decisions, controlling and choosing where you live, with who, service providers, how you spend your days, how you spend your money and what you choose to eat.

To learn more contact:
Brooke Sniesak
(810) 941-5454
[email protected]

Other HCBS Resources:
Region 10
State of Michigan

What is Independent Facilitation?

An Independent Facilitator is an individual who facilitates the Person-Centered Planning (PCP) process in collaboration with the person. Individuals’ receiving support through the Community Mental Health Service Provider (CMHSP) have a right to choose an independent or external facilitator for their PCP. The terms independent and external mean that the facilitator is independent of or external from the CMHSP. It means that the person has no financial interest in the outcome of the supports and services outlined in the PCP.

What is Individual Placement and Support (IPS)

The Individual Placement and Support (IPS) program helps people with serious mental illness find and keep competitive community jobs. To qualify for the IPS program an individual must have a serious mental illness and want to work. Rapid job search insures a person is in front of an employer within 30 days of starting the program. IPS seeks to find a natural “fit” between an individual and competitive jobs in the community by helping individuals identify their personal strengths, skills, and job interests. Program participants work in a variety of different types of businesses including factory, office, restaurant, fast food, retail, medical locations, landscaping and non-profits.

What is InSHAPE

InSHAPE is a wellness program designed especially for people who have a severe mental illness.

InSHAPE goals include improving your physical health and quality of life, reducing your risk of diseases, increasing your lifespan, teaching you ways to reduce stress and supporting recovery from mental illness

InSHAPE helps you learn to set fitness goals. It helps you exercise. It teaches you how to eat healthy. InSHAPE also teaches you how to pay attention to your medical needs.

The Health Mentor will:

• Monitor your exercise program
• Go with you to the gym
• Give home exercise programs
• Teach about home exercise equipment
• Show how to use exercise equipment
• Show how to perform low impact exercises without equipment
• Show how to make a healthy shopping list
• Teach how to shop and cook
• Review your weekly food log
• Teach healthy eating habits

The Requirements

To join InSHAPE you must:

• Receive services from your local County Community Mental Health in Lapeer, Sanilac or St. Clair.
• Be 18 years or older
• Have a severe mental illness
• Have one or more of the following:

• Cardiovascular Disease
• High Blood Pressure
• High Cholesterol
• Diabetes (Type I or II)
• Obesity (BMI 30 or greater)

Learn About Nutrition

A registered dietitian will teach you about the mental and physical impact nutrition and exercise has on your body.

Read more and watch videos on nutrition.

What is Integrated Dual Disorder Treatment (IDDT)

The Integrated Dual Disorder Treatment (IDDT) model is an evidence-based practice that improves quality of life for people with co-occurring severe mental illness and substance use disorders by combining substance abuse services with mental health services. It helps people address both disorders at the same time—in the same service organization by the same team of treatment providers. IDDT emphasizes that individuals achieve big changes like sobriety, symptom management, and an increase in independent living through a series of small, overlapping, incremental changes that occur over time. Therefore, IDDT takes a stages-of-change approach to treatment, which is individualized to address the unique circumstances of each person’s life.

What is Mental Health Court

The St. Clair County Mental Health Court is a voluntary program and joint collaboration between the 72nd District Court and St. Clair County Community Mental Health. The program is available to misdemeanor offenders who have a severe mental illness or developmental disability. People accepted into the program have weekly hearings, must abstain from drugs and alcohol and are required to follow through with their mental health treatments.

What is OBRA

OBRA, the Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987, stipulates that all residents of Medicaid certified nursing homes are evaluated annually to determine if they have a mental illness or intellectual / developmental disability. CMH provides these evaluations free of charge. If an individual needs specialized services for a mental illness or intellectual / developmental disability and do not require continuous nursing care or medical supervision, CMH will assist in arranging treatment outside of the nursing home environment.

What is Outpatient?

Outpatient services provides individual therapy, group therapy, and evidenced based treatment services to those who have a severe mental illness, co-occurring diagnosis (mental illness and a substance use), and/or a developmental disability. The purpose of the program is to provide clinical and support coordination services to individuals in order to help people progress through their recovery. These programs offer comprehensive, coordinated and defined services that vary in intensity and are based on an individual’s needs. In order to best fulfill the needs of the people being served outpatient staff are trained in evidence based practices/promising practices. Individuals are offered individualized treatment opportunities that assist them in moving through their recovery.

What is Self Directed Services?

Self Directed Services is an arrangement that is made between the individual receiving services and SCCCMH. Self Directed Services means exercising authority to responsibly control and manage an individual budget for supports and services that are authorized in the IPOS. The participant exercises choice and control over who provides services and supports and how they are provided.

For more information on Self Directed Services please contact Greta Nichols at (810) 363-8481.

What is Substance Use Disorder?

St. Clair County Community Mental Health (SCCCMH) SUD program provides screenings, treatment, and support to individuals with a substance use disorder through:

• Crisis Support Services, including 24-hour mobile crisis team and crisis stabilization
• Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) is the use of medications, in combination with counseling/therapy, to provide a “whole-person” approach to the treatment of SUD. Research shows that a combination of medication and therapy can successfully treat and can help sustain recovery. The medication works in the brain to block the effects of alcohol and opioids, relieve physiological cravings, and normalize body functions without the negative and euphoric effects of the substance used.
• Individual Therapy is often helpful for those living with SUD. It can reinforce motivation to maintain recovery and target any underlying mental health concerns such as trauma, anxiety or depression. Therapy can teach coping skills to help work through and manage life challenges.
• Certified Recovery Coaches are people who are successfully living in recovery who help others experiencing similar situations. Through shared understanding, respect, and mutual empowerment, Recovery Coaches help people become and stay engaged in the recovery process, providing support along the way.
• SUD Relapse Prevention Group supports people seeking long-term recovery from SUD. Topics include: understanding addiction, coping skills for recovery, and preventing relapse from stressors of everyday life.

Funding for services provided in part by MDHHS and Region 10 PIHP

What is Veteran Services?

CMH has a service specifically designed to assist veterans with accessing treatment, navigating the VA system and linking up with other community resources. Any veteran can access these services regardless of:

• Age
• Type of insurance or no insurance
• Income level
• Combat status
• Type of discharge
• Length of military service

We Can Help!

The veteran services at CMH are peer-led, meaning the Navigator is also a veteran. The Veteran Navigator can assist you with:

• The VA benefit enrollment process
• Accessing other community resources such as housing, employment or health care
• Enrolling in mental health services

To learn more contact our Veteran Navigator:

Wendy Martindale
(810) 966-3755
[email protected]