Behavioral Health Services

St. Mary's Behavioral Health Services provides services to adults in need of diagnostic evaluation, crisis stabilization, and treatment. We are a family-oriented program and encourage all members of the patient's support system to participate in the healing process of the patient.

The full continuum of services includes multi-disciplinary inpatient treatment, as well as intensive outpatient programming – called Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills training program. The program helps patients to understand emotions and what triggers them; to become more assertive, but not aggressive; to increase their ability to tolerate distress and to be more effective in their communications.

Today, the abuse of alcohol or other drugs is involved in over fifty percent of all emergency room visits and over seventy percent of all psychiatric admissions. The following is a list of behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and physiological changes that indicate the possible/probable presence of the illness of chemical dependency. This list is applicable to all ages. If five (5) or more indicators are present, then a full scale Chemical Dependency Assessment is indicated in spite of any insistence that alcohol or other drug use is non-existent.

Behavioral Indicators:

• Changes in sleeping patterns
• Suicidal gestures or attempts
• Increasing social isolation or unexplained absences
• Extensive self-medicating with little-to-no relief
• Repeated requests for mood/mind-altering chemicals
• Accessing multiple physicians or emergency rooms
• Marital, employment, or educational discord
• Frequent changes in employment, residence, peer group, or recreational activities
• Underemployment for educational level
• Child or spouse abuse as a victim or perpetrator
• Unexplained loss or gain of monies, toys, possessions
• Increasing financial difficulties/windfalls
• Excessive/abnormal alcohol or other chemical use
• Repeated attempts to modify alcohol/chemical use
• Any legal involvement
• Continued alcohol/chemical use in spite of adverse consequences
• Significant discrepancy between chronological age and age of primary peer group

Emotional Indicators:

• Any change in normal anxiety level
• Increased vegetative symptoms of depression
• Increase or decrease in energy level
• Increase in unpredictability/impulsiveness with mood
• Decreased goal-directed drives or loss of motivation
• Loss of interest in personal hygiene standards
• Change in affect (facial expression)
• Change of interest in routine activities
• Loss of interest in non-alcohol/chemical using activities
• Increased aggression with little-to-no provocation
• Decreased sel-awaremenss and/or insight

Cognitive Indicators:

• Increased inability to verbalize concern about self
• Increased unwillingness to participate in a discussion about alcohol/chemical abuse
• Decreased ability for verbal expression or executive functioning, i.e. planning, deciding, abstracting, etc.
• Increased paranoia/suspicion without provocation
• Increased attention deficit difficulty
• Increased memory difficulty, both short-term and long-term