SBP’s Wellness and Mental Health Services
In response to enduring post-storm and post-oil spill mental health needs in community, SBP’s wellness and mental health services offer a client-centered, culturally sensitive, timely and evidenced-based continuum of care. Our range of services treat each resident based on the needs they present.
The goals of our Wellness and Mental Health Services are to:
1. Identify residents whose lives and health were negatively impacted by Hurricane Katrina and the BP Oil Disaster
2. Mitigate storm- and spill- related disorders
3. Promote individual and community resiliency
4. Provide residents with services designed to address mental health needs and improve their quality of life
INTERESTED IN OUR PROGRAMS? CONTACT JOYCELYN HEINTZ AT JOYCELYN.HEINTZ@STBERNARDPROJECT.ORG OR CALL 504-278-5544.
Center for Wellness and Mental Health (CWMH)
The Center for Wellness and Mental Health (CWMH), which opened in February 2009 in partnership with the Department of Psychiatry at LSU, provides free, evidenced-based multimodal mental health services that help residents impacted by Katrina, the oil spill and/or the tertiary effects of these disasters to become mentally and emotionally healthy. The CWMH targets uninsured and underinsured residents in the community and is the only mental health clinic in the area to offer free care to patients of all ages presenting with a wide range of severe psychiatric disorders.
What services does the CWMH offer?
The CWMH provides trauma-specific mental health services and wellness services including:
1. Evidence-based practices including group or individual cognitive behavioral therapy, individual and group and child-parent psychotherapy, trauma-focused CBT and dialectical behavioral therapy;
2. Medication management;
3. Stress reduction, wellness, and mind/body technique sessions facilitated by licensed clinicians.
Peer to Peer Program
Operated in partnership with the Tulane University School of Social Work, the Peer-to-Peer Counseling Program hires, trains and supervises resilient oil spill-impacted residents (often fishermen and fishermen’s family members) as peer-to-peer counselors. These counselors access hard-to-reach residents and support them in developing skills in stress reduction, wellness, decision making, resiliency and effective communication. Further, the peer-to-peer counselors identify residents who present clinical or acute needs and link these residents with the CWMH and SBP’s case management and services. The training curriculum has been developed by the Tulane’s School of Social Work.
Louisiana Spirit
In an effort to holistically address the needs in our community following the oil spill, SBP assumed the management and operation of the Louisiana Spirit Program in November 2010 until the program ended at the end of 2011. Louisiana Spirit is a state-funded program, which utilizes counselors and outreach workers to conduct community-based assessments, crisis counseling and referrals. The staff, which had offices in Chalmette, met residents in the comfort of their homes, at local businesses and other locations throughout the community. Through this less formal approach they were able to reach residents who would not normally seek out mental health resources. Outreach workers helped these residents problem-solve and referred them to additional resources, often including the CWMH.
©2010 ST. BERNARD PROJECT