Integrative Psychiatric Services
We at Alessi Psychiatry and Life Center assume as our primary purpose to understand the conditions before us. This requires an all-encompassing evaluation that allows us to see and understand each case as unique. From there, we then pursue case conceptualization and the development of a treatment plan, both to treat the conditions and to identify any factors that may be sustaining the condition.
Step I - Formal Evaluation
The formal evaluation begins with the distribution of forms that will allow you to provide us with clinical information about the difficulties you are experiencing. These forms will be distributed via the Patient Portal soon after you make initial contact with the Center. These will be returned to the Center, and then an appointment will be made. You will be seen either via the Telehealth component of the Patient Portal or in person. During this two-hour appointment, additional clinical information will be derived and combined with the information collected from forms. At the completion of this time, an overview of diagnoses and conditions present will be presented to you, and if further evaluations and testings are needed, they will be suggested.
Step II - Case Conceptualization
How a case is often conceptualized is greatly dependent on the professional you are working with. If working with a psychiatrist, they will identify a condition, and there is a high probability they will recommend the use of a medication to stabilize the conditions present or to minimize the symptoms present. If working with a psychologist, they might also identify a condition. Their solutions will more than likely be a psychological intervention to help an individual learn to better cope or decrease their response in different stressful situations through an insight-oriented approach, such as cognitive behavioral therapy or dialectical behavioral therapy. If working with a social worker, they may take the path of looking at the characteristics of your life and determining what the sustaining factors that lead to you to continue to have a condition are. We hope to bring together these three approaches so that a case conceptualization can encompass all three starting with the identification of any conditions that may be present and then having interventions potentially include medications, psychological interventions, or internal work to help you better cope with your life circumstances. We hope this case conceptualization would be more inclusive than only approaching it from one perspective.
Beyond this stage of the formal evaluation and resulting interventions, we also would hope to better understand the impact of your potential conditions on your functional abilities. This would later and only after you have shown some degree of stability and progress.
Step - III Intervention
After the formal evaluation, we would then develop a treatment plan that would involve interventions from all three clinical perspectives. From a psychiatric perspective, your conditions might respond best to medications; therefore, medication prescriptions would occur, but that is merely one component to what we might be pursuing for treatment. Given that often conditions don’t fit a textbook description, this can be time consuming and take days, to weeks, to months. Further, we would conceptualize the use of psychological interventions as a way of helping you better cope and identify your conditions. However, use of different clinical perspectives are variable, as there are certain conditions which medications are the primary intervention such as psychotic states, psychotic disorders, bipolar severe mood disorders, or depression. The final aspect of a potential intervention is a psychoeducational component where you are made better aware of your conditions, so you can gain better insight into how they are affecting your life and what steps might be taken to minimize their impact. These interventions will continue and adjustments will be made as we gain a greater understanding of you, your conditions, and their response to different interventions.
Step - IV Subsequent assessments & follow ups
Following the formal evaluation session and the start of interventions, subsequent assessments might be indicated. Some of these might include laboratory evaluations such as blood studies, EEGs, MRIs, etc. Additionally, they could involve further testing such as psychological testing, neuropsychological testing, or speech and language evaluations and assessments. Also, we will offer assessments for autistic spectrum disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Throughout the time that you are being seen, the conditions present will be closely monitored to determine their response and efficacy of the interventions to determine if they are correct. If not, then alterations in your treatment plan will occur.
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