Behavioral Health Services

Fort Payne Behavioral Health Services

We offer state-of-the-art behavioral health services to children, adolescents, and adults throughout the Fort Payne area. We believe in assisting people in becoming the best version of themselves they can be and accomplish this through the following behavioral health services.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in Alabama

CBT effectively treats many psychological problems, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and severe mental illness (SMI). It is an evidence-based approach utilized to assist people in creating real change in their lives. Some situations in which CBT may be successfully applied include:

• Helping you cope with the loss of a loved one
• Treating your mental illness when you are unable to take medications
• Helping you cope with the physical symptoms, such as pain, that are caused by an illness
• Learning how to recognize why others behave the way they do
• Developing confidence in yourself and your ability to handle life stressors
• Providing you with the tools, you need to communicate more effectively and manage conflicts with others
• Learning how to relax your body and bring tranquility to your mind
• Facing your fears instead of ignoring them

Our licensed professionals provides treatment as they talk with you to help you become more self-aware of any unhealthy thinking habits you may have. This is accomplished by identifying any specific emotional challenges you face and creating methods to help you cope with those challenges. CBT is a structured therapy and can be combined with other therapies for maximum effectiveness.

Brief Solution-Focused Interventions in Alabama

At Limestone, we use evidence-based, solution-focused, goal-driven brief intervention strategies in behavior modification as part of our Fort Payne behavioral health services. These strategies can be used to treat addiction, stress-related issues, anxiety, and depression in people of all ages. Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) focuses on your future and solutions rather than your past and your problems, and your future hopes are looked at through the lens of your current circumstances. Therefore, it is best used to help patients when they have a particular goal they are trying to reach.

SFBT is a therapeutic approach that combines goal-focused psychology practices with established psychological principles. There are several questions used in SFBT, such as:

• Miracle Questions: Part of SFBT is having you think outside of the box. For example, if all of a sudden you were no longer experiencing the issue that you are currently trying to solve, what would be different? What would have been the change that absolved you of your problem? Answering these questions can help you see exactly what the problem is and the change that needs to occur to resolve it.
• Exception Questions: Another belief in SFBT is that you have times in your life when your problem is no longer a problem or the adverse effects are not present. The question then becomes, why do these exceptions exist? Once that is determined, a solution may be found.
• Scaling Questions: SFBT utilizes scaling questions to help you judge how you see a problem and any progress you make towards resolving that problem. A common way of understanding this is to ask a client how their symptoms are on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being the best they could be and ten being the worst they have ever been.

Behavior Modification in Alabama

By finding out why you do what you do, one of our Fort Payne behavioral health services professionals can assist you in modifying your unwanted behavior and replacing it with more desirable practices. Personalized techniques are developed to assist in behavior modification. Unlike other types of therapy, behavior modification places more emphasis on the consequences of your actions rather than concentrating exclusively on what your thoughts and feelings are.

Operant conditioning is a theory that behavior modification revolves around. It holds that when a behavior is reinforced, it is more likely to be repeated, and when a behavior is not reinforced, it is more likely to fade out. Therefore, it involves the process of finding out the reasons why you behave the way you do and reinforcing those behaviors that are wanted.

Positive reinforcement, in simple terms, is rewarding good behavior. After a while, the good behavior becomes linked to the reward (reinforcer), making a positive connection. Many discipline techniques for children operate around this logic. For example, a child may not be able to play a game with friends until they clean their room. Playing with friends is the reinforcer while cleaning their room is the desired behavior.

Negative reinforcement is a little more difficult to understand. Many people think negative reinforcement involves punishment of some sort, but it does not. Instead, it is the subtraction of behaviors that are negative in an attempt to encourage desired behaviors. A very simple example is the removal of junk food from your kitchen to encourage a healthier lifestyle.

Another way behavioral therapy eliminates unwanted behavior is by ignoring it. But, again, it goes back to the theory that behavior that is not reinforced will fade out and be replaced by behavior that is reinforced.

Psychoeducation in Alabama

Psychoeducation (PE) is a type of treatment intervention where you are educated about your diagnosis and how it can be treated. It uses motivation and emotions to help you learn how to cope with your illness and treat it so you may see improvement in your symptoms. In a nutshell, PE helps you understand yourself and gives you confidence in knowing that you do not walk alone. The goals of PE include:

• To provide you with information about your condition, you are not left wondering what you can expect. Knowing more about your diagnosis, in general, can help you see how it will affect you personally.
• To help you learn how to treat your condition best and know when you need to seek treatment.
• To teach you why you may have this condition. Different conditions are caused due to different reasons, such as environmental, biological, and genetic factors.
• To help you process what is happening to you. For example, having a severe condition can cause you to experience many different emotions, and you may have problems coming to terms with or processing these emotions.
• To teach you how prescription medications can help you manage your condition. Many people receiving a new diagnosis have no experience with medications and how they can assist them, and the side effects they may cause.
• To teach you to become your own advocate. PE can help you learn how to be assertive and communicate what you need to reach your full potential in a healthy way.

Preventative Behavioral Health Services in Alabama

Our Fort Payne behavioral health services include offering our mental health patients preventative measures. We provide these services to help our patients prevent existing mental health conditions from becoming worse and to stop new mental health problems from developing. How we approach this will depend on your condition and what we perceive as the best way to provide you with the preemptive assistance you need most.

Mental health disorders have their roots in various factors, including our genetic makeup, biology, and the circumstances and experiences we have and currently live in. Recognizing that certain factors make us more prone to mental health disorders assists us in determining who can best benefit from our preventative services. We look at these factors and teach you techniques and tools to obtain and maintain your optimum mental health. By considering these factors, preventative measures can be customized for your particular needs by considering these factors.

There are measures you can take on your own to aid in preventing your mental health decline. They include:

• Receiving adequate rest.
• Maintaining a healthy diet to keep your body and mind at their best. Your brain is an organ that needs to be cared for like all your other bodily organs.
• Exercising regularly. Exercise has been proven to help with mental health.
• Finding someone you trust and talking to them about what is going on in your life and how you feel. Being able to speak to someone else can help you cope with your feelings and not feel so isolated.
• Helping others. Charity often helps us feel better by taking the focus off ourselves and appreciating where we are, what we have, and how far we have come.
• Allowing yourself grace. Caring for ourselves properly is a process that takes time, and you will make mistakes.

Speak with a Fort Payne Behavioral Health Services Provider

If you or a loved one is in need of a Fort Payne behavioral health services provider, contact our office to schedule a free consultation. We are a small practice with a significant outreach and are passionate about providing our clients with the behavioral health resources they need. We can be reached by calling 256-979-1777 or via our contact page.