Summary: Mental Health Clinical Experience

During mental health clinical on February 1, 2016 I observed two therapy sessions lead by Debby Richmond at Bridgehaven. As I waited for Debby to give me a tour I was approached by several people using the services in the facility. I was looking at the art work and was greeted by one individual lady who actually helped give the tour. After the tour I was educated about the facility and what they do and later attended the therapy sessions. The focus of the first therapy session was women’s issues. This group consisted of all women ranging from younger aged women in their twenties to older women in their sixties. Many of these women had suffered years of abuse, some abuse afflicted were from early childhood and other abuse incurred in adulthood …show more content…
The women who joined the group were all from the first group I attended except one. The one women who was new to the group had the spotlight because she was having major problems with custody battle with her eleven-month old daughter. This group’s focus was on self-determination. All the individuals had a sense of what self-determination was and there were steps to achieving this. Five steps were discussed for achieving success in self-determination. The first step was to decide what you are going to do and is it the right thing you, your goal(s) in other words. The second step is developing a plan to meet your goals. Following the second step is determining what help you may need to achieve what you have decided to do or your meet your goal. Then you must determine what help you need for each part of your plan for achieving success. The next step is record your progress by finding a way to maintain documentation of your progress. Finally the fifth step is to disseminate by sharing what you did and what you learned throughout this process. All the members of this group were concerned for one another by reinforcing positive comments and ideas to help the others. Even though this group was focused on the self-determination aspect individual goals were shared and discussed in order to get clarity on ways in achieving these individual goals. Much focus was on the individual young lady in the custody battle because she had court the next morning and her anxiety was high. By the end of the session there were many great ideas that had floated around the table and seemed as if some individuals were going to take advantage of the information provided. Bridgehaven is a great asset in the community helping those in need through group therapy, individual counseling and the ability to socialize with a peer group that share many of the same problems finding solutions