Hall-Brooke Offers Outpatient Program Especially For Women

WESTPORT — A program providing evaluation and treatment alternatives for women is being offered at Hall-Brooke Behavioral Health Services, 47 Long Lots Road.

This new service recognizes that many women require a structured, intensive, and tailored-to-the-individual program to meet their mental health treatment needs.

Hall-Brooke’s new program is designed to involve community and referring care providers from the point of a participant’s admission through planning for her discharge.

An interdisciplinary team will integrate individual, group, and family therapy with medication management for each woman in the program.

The program meets Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from 10 am to 12:30 pm, and typically runs for 15 to 28 treatment days, based on each woman’s needs.

Among the group therapies being offered are:

Symptom Management to help participants identify and cope with their symptoms. This involves changing negative thought patterns and developing positive forms of emotional expression, as well as interacting with others in a new way.

Relationship Issues addresses how these impact in a positive or negative way on growth and healthy functioning. With genograms, participants explore family patterns and the impact of these on their health.

Coping with Loss helps participants deal with the inevitable losses and changes that transpire in an adult’s life span. This topic also addresses traumatic loss.

Mind, Body, and Spirit, a dominant theme at Hall-Brooke, stresses the use of all a participant’s internal skills to develop and protect her mental health. In line with this concept of “wholeness,” participants learn the value of a healthy lifestyle with appropriate sleep cycles, exercise, and proper nutrition. They also participate in meditation and journaling exercises.

The development of this program geared specifically to women recognizes that mental illness affects men and women differently. A number of disorders are more common in women and some, which are suffered by both sexes, express themselves with different symptoms. Scientists only now are beginning to assess the contribution of biological and psycho-social factors in mental health and mental illness as these apply specifically to men and women, according to Thomas E. Smith, MD, Hall-Brooke’s medical director.

Some mental health, mood changes, and physical symptoms can be related specifically to female hormonal imbalances. Postpartum depression and menopausal depression are two prime examples. Care for mental health of women definitely is a discrete undertaking from that of the general public, Dr Smith noted.

Persons interested in the Women’s Mental Health Intensive Outpatient Program offered by Hall-Brooke Behavioral Health Services of Westport should call 203-221-8878 for information.

The Especially For Women Program is part of Hall-Brooke’s Ambulatory Services Department, headed by Debra I. Iversen, a licensed clinical social worker.

Founded more than a century ago, Hall-Brooke moved into a new 58,000-square-foot scientifically advanced facility in 2001. It provides inpatient treatment programs for children, adolescents, and adults with mental illness who require hospitalization. It is the only treatment facility with inpatient programs for children in Fairfield County.  Hall-Brooke also provides a wide variety of outpatient mental health programs and operates a therapeutic school on its 24-acre campus.

Hall-Brooke is a wholly owned subsidiary of St Vincent’s Health Services of Bridgeport. It is affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry of Bridgeport. It is affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.