John Hopkins – Children’s Mental Health Center

Mental Health

Treatment for drug and alcohol addiction often centers on improving mental health. Inpatient care is ideal for people who need closer monitoring while receiving therapeutic and mental health services. Standard therapies include group and individual counseling, relapse prevention education, coping skills training, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), motivational interviewing and family support groups. With all critical therapies combined, there is a greater chance for improving mental health and achieving sustained recovery.

• Medicaid
• Private insurance
• Self-pay options
• Financial aid
• Medicare
• Military insurance
• Daily
• Financing available

• Adolescence program
• Children program
• Hearing impaired program
• HIV/AIDS program
• Program for men
• Program for women

Outpatient

Clients who are exiting detox or intensive inpatient treatment often enroll in outpatient rehab programs to ensure a robust continuity of care. Outpatient programs allow clients to remain in or return to their homes and workplaces while continuing to receive treatment, which typically includes addiction counseling and recovery-focused life skills training. Clients in opioid and/or alcohol recovery may also receive medication assisted treatment (MAT), including medication induction and maintenance, at an outpatient facility.

Intervention Services

Intervention services helps family or friends of addicts stage an intervention, which is a meeting in which loved ones share their concerns and attempt to get an addict into treatment. Professional intervention specialists can help loved ones organize, gather, and communicate with an addict. They can guide intervention participants in describing the damage the addict's behavior is causing and that outside help is necessary to address the addiction. The ideal outcome of an intervention is for the addict to go to rehab and get the help they need.

Aftercare Support

Completing a drug or alcohol rehab program shouldn't spell the end of substance abuse treatment. Aftercare involves making a sustainable plan for recovery, including ongoing support. This can include sober living arrangements like halfway houses, career counseling, and setting a patient up with community programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or Narcotics Anonymous (NA).

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a therapy modality that focuses on the relationship between one's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It is used to establish and allow for healthy responses to thoughts and feelings (instead of unhealthy responses, like using drugs or alcohol). CBT has been proven effective for recovering addicts of all kinds, and is used to strengthen a patient's own self-awareness and ability to self-regulate. CBT allows individuals to monitor their own emotional state, become more adept at communicating with others, and manage stress without needing to engage in substance abuse.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a modified form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a treatment designed to help people understand and ultimately affect the relationship between their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Individual and family therapy focusing on adolescents who engage in self-defeating behaviors. Multi-family group therapy comprised of adolescents and their caregivers participate in group therapy together to learn and practice DBT skills.

Experiential Therapy

Experiential therapy is a form of therapy in which clients are encouraged to surface and work through subconscious issues by engaging in real-time experiences. Experiential therapy departs from traditional talk therapy by involving the body, and having clients engage in activities, movements, and physical and emotional expression. This can involve role-play or using props (which can include other people). Experiential therapy can help people process trauma, memories, and emotion quickly, deeply, and in a lasting fashion, leading to substantial and impactful healing.

Family Therapy

The Circle of Security is intended for parents of young children up to age 5. The purpose of the group is to strengthen and promote secure parent-child relationships during this crucial age period. The program teaches parents principles to raise young children in a safe, nurturing, loving and secure environment. Participants’ skills are enhanced to promote them to become “good enough parents". The Chicago Parent Program is a group program for parents of children ages 2 to 5 that uses videos and small group discussion to explore parenting strategies.

Group Therapy

Group therapy is any therapeutic work that happens in a group (not one-on-one). There are a number of different group therapy modalities, including support groups, experiential therapy, psycho-education, and more. Group therapy involves treatment as well as processing interaction between group members.

Individual Therapy

In individual therapy, a patient meets one-on-one with a trained psychologist or counselor. Therapy is a pivotal part of effective substance abuse treatment, as it often covers root causes of addiction, including challenges faced by the patient in their social, family, and work/school life.

Life Skills

The Social Skills Group Intervention is a group therapy for elementary-aged children (kindergarten through fifth grade) to learn and practice basic social skills and develop more appropriate techniques to get along with others and manage stressful social experiences.

Motivational Interviewing

Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a clinical approach to helping people with substance abuse issues and other conditions shift behavior in positive ways. It is more goal-oriented than traditional psychotherapy, as MI counselors directly attempt to get clients to consider making behavioral change (rather than wait for them to come to conclusions themselves). Its primary purpose is to resolve ambivalence and help clients become able to make healthy choices freely.

Nutrition Therapy

Nutrition therapy, aka medical nutrition therapy (MNT), is a way of treating physical, emotional, and medical conditions through diet. Specific dietary plans are designed by professional nutritionists or registered dietitians, and patients follow them in order to positively affect their physical and mental health.

Trauma Therapy

Trauma therapy addresses traumatic incidents from a client's past that are likely affecting their present-day experience. Trauma is often one of the primary triggers and potential causes of addiction, and can stem from child sexual abuse, domestic violence, having a parent with a mental illness, losing one or both parents at a young age, teenage or adult sexual assault, or any number of other factors. Treatment for preschool-age through adolescents who have experienced traumatic events. The caregiver and child work collaboratively to recover from trauma.

• Day school
  The School-based Mental Health Program is located at various southeast Baltimore public schools. Therapists based in these schools work closely with school and county staff to provide individual, family, and group counseling as well as crisis intervention for children and families. The team can make referrals for testing and further treatment. The multi-disciplinary professional team includes a child psychiatrist who goes to each school for scheduled medication consultations. The team also work with individual schools to address their specific mental health needs. Children and their families must have Medical Assistance or be eligible for it.