Chugach Counseling is an adult out-patient clinically based program for those coping with severe mental illness and co-occurring disorders. A screening assessment and intake appointment are required before placement into our program. The focus is to develop strategies to manage mental illness symptoms and co-occurring disorders and expand your quality of life. This is accomplished through professional and caring therapy that promotes an appropriate relationship in which to explore issues that may be causing you difficulty in life. Specifically individual and group therapy is offered along with psychological testing. Chugach Counseling also works in concert with Community Connections, and the Medical and Nursing Teams at ACMHS for continuity of your care.
Groups currently offered:
DBT groups – are available for women and also one for both male and females. The focus is for participants is to learn mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills. DBT skills help individuals to manage difficult emotions, cope with relationship stressors and get through crisis situations. In addition participants are taught how to interact with others in different interpersonal situations safely.
Men’s Relationship Group – These sessions, which require active involvement by those in the group, discuss and use a collection of skills and therapeutic interactions which are aimed at assisting men to become more effective at dealing with both male and female relationships and other varied situations.
The Art Therapy group – is a creative psychotherapy group that provides an opportunity to express thoughts, and feelings through the medium of art. It helps people manage physical and emotional problems by using creative activities to express their feelings. It provides a way for people to come to terms with emotional conflicts, increase self-awareness, and express unspoken and often unconscious concerns about their illness and their lives.
The Finding Happiness group – is a psychotherapy group that allows group members to lead discussions focusing on ways to set healthy boundaries and expand interests and recovery outside of the mental health community. Group members discuss symptom management, struggles with being labeled and how to balance recovery while trying to achieve a full life with a variety of interests, goals and activities.
The Trauma Recovery and Empowerment Model TREM group – The goal of this group is to help women become stronger and move forward in life after experiencing trauma. The group does this by helping women develop skills to deal with current life problems, which might be related to past trauma. Some topics the group will discuss in the first few sessions are self-esteem, how to soothe yourself when you are upset, and how to set limits with people.
Confronting Anxiety and Depression – Taking a proactive stance – This group will help clients, who are already in treatment for either anxiety or depression, learn and foster varied proactive methods for effectively dealing with behaviors that many experience with these disorders.
