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Animal Assisted Therapy with Alyssa Overton
Continuing Care after Treatment: How to Keep Recovery Moving Forward
Addressing long term recovery often takes more than one episode of primary residential treatment. While the purpose of residential treatment is to provide a safe, structured living environment to help an individual stabilize, detox from drugs and alcohol and begin the early healthy coping skills necessary to help them on their journey to sobriety, it is just the beginning. A good in-patient residential treatment program does not stop once the client completes 28-30 days of treatment. The introduction of a strong continuing care plan should begin once the client completes detox before they exit in-patient treatment.
What is a continuing care plan? A continuing care plan is a collaborative partnership between a clinical case manager, the client and the therapist to design an individualized plan that provides a safety net of resources to continue their addiction treatment work. This could include Partial Hospitalization, Intensive Outpatient and active 12- step programming and sometimes sober living.
Why is continued “step –down” treatment important for long-term sobriety? According to NIDA, relapse is common in addiction treatment, with relapse rates being between 40 and 60 percent. Preventing relapse must include a continuing care plan that supports the individual in their early recovery. The Journal of Psychiatry published a 2014 review article, “The Continuing Care Model of Substance Use Treatment: What Works, and When Is “Enough,” “Enough?” Findings suggest that the overarching objective of any continuing care model should be to sustain treatment gains attained in the primary phase in an effort to ultimately prevent relapse.
In addition to our early primary addiction treatment offered at Harmony Foundation, we have also included a clinical case management team trained to work in partnership with the client and therapists to identify the “right” plan for each person. With over 47 years of treating individuals with substance use disorders, we have fostered partnerships with external providers to help our alumni be successful. “The most critical aspect of building a continuing care plan with our clients is letting them drive their recovery planning process. Telling them what to do and where to go doesn’t allow them to embrace their recovery.” says Alyssa Hansen, Director of Clinical Case Management.
Fostering this partnership and building a continuing care plan has shown positive results. According to M. Vannicelli , overall, continuing care participation in the first 3 months following discharge from residential treatment appears to be significantly related to fewer days since last drink and lower levels of alcohol-related impairment at both 3 and 6 months. Harmony has seen its own positive results in post-treatment engagement with over 54% of clients staying connected to a continuing care plan after 12 months.
When exploring residential treatment, asking about continuing care is as important as learning about the detox process. Without a solid, compassionate and collaborative continuing care team working with the client to approach life outside of residential team, clients may not be sufficiently prepared for their early journey of sobriety.
To learn more about Harmony Foundation Clinical Case Management, Click Here to listen to the team talk more about their important work in facilitating a recovery direction that is designed to be supportive and engaging, helping clients succeed.
Harmony’s Clinical Case Management Team
Boulder Integrated Health
Learn more about Boulder Integrated Health and the Detox services they will be offering to Boulder and the surrounding areas beginning October 9,2017
Harmony Foundation Podcast Interview with John Stenzel, CEO of A Healing Place – The Estates
Gina Thorne: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Harmony Foundation Podcast Series. I’m pleased to be joined by John Stenzel, CEO of A Healing Place – The Estates in … Remind me what place in California you guys are located?
John Stenzel: Ventura County, just south of Santa Barbara.
Gina Thorne: Wonderful to have you here.
John Stenzel: Thank you.
Gina Thorne: Really glad that you came up to visit with us today at Harmony. We want to hear more about what you do, and what A Healing Place is about, but before we do that, we want to hear a little bit more about your background, and what got you into the field of addiction treatment.
John Stenzel: Great. Thank you. I’ve been in health care nearly 40 years. I spent 11 years in physical and occupational rehab side, and working with paraplegics, quadriplegics, et cetera. After doing that for 11 years, it got me interested in the field of psychiatry, and then addiction medicine, and then behavioral health.
Gina Thorne: And you ran a couple of programs, I think, right?
John Stenzel: I had several programs. I had an adolescent residential program, I had a silver living business program, I had an international psychiatric services company, and had a very large behavioral group practice in LA. Now, I’ve transitioned into A Healing Place – The Estates.
Gina Thorne: Which is a very great way for us to segue into hearing more about this unique program that you have created with a couple of wonderful people. It really is a program that, based on my conversations with you all, is transforming the epidemic of chronic pain in our country. It’s one of those things that’s on the forefront of everyone’s mind in the field of addiction treatment, but not really familiar with how to treat it. It sounds like you are really working on creating a unique model to do that.
John Stenzel: Well, we are. I’ve partnered up with two industry professionals, Dr. Joe Cabaret is our chief medical officer and co-founder. He’s triple boarded, anesthesiology, pain, and addiction. Our other partner, chief clinical officer Dr. Stephen Grinstead, and he’s worked in the field for about 35 years, and he created the addiction free pain management evidence based treatment system, and that has become the foundation for our program.
Gina Thorne: Wonderful. Can you talk with me for a few minutes about what a client would experience if they were coming into your program, who has had a long-standing experience of chronic pain? What would they expect coming into the Healing Place?
John Stenzel: Because of the specialty program that we’ve developed, it’s a triple diagnosis program, so everyone has to have chronic pain that comes into the program, and 95% of everybody that is suffering from chronic pain will have psychological disorders and/or addictive disorders, because of the opiate epidemic, et cetera. The program is unique in that we are a closed program. We don’t allow any more than six patients at a time. It’s a closed cohort, and every level of care is for six weeks. The patients that are coming in, they’ve been suffering from chronic pain for years if not decades, so they need to be medically stabilized, detoxed, psychiatrically stabilized, and motivated to want to work the program. It’s quite unique. We start a new program every six weeks. All levels of care are six weeks in duration. We’re dealing with very, very complex issues, physical, sometimes failed operations, injuries, workers comp patients, those kinds of things, so they’re very complex and we offer medical services, psychiatric services, psychological services, and obviously addictive services.
Gina Thorne: It’s a really special program, and much needed I think. Hopefully, we’ll be able to see more of it being replicated in other parts of the country. You mentioned that you’ve been in the field for a little while, and so as we look at where health care is going, and what’s going on with the field of addiction treatment, what are you personally seeing as a forecast for the future around addiction?
John Stenzel: Well, I think what’s going to happen, I think there’s going to be a resurgence of integrated care, not just addiction as a stand-alone. We all have seen the history of going from dual diagnosis to coexisting disorders, and most patients now are very complex. They have coexisting disorders, the chronic pain, medical issues, and there’s other diseases that we’re dealing with at the same time concurrently with treating these. I think one of the things that we’re going to be seeing is a major paradigm shift tied to outcomes, and that treatment programs need to be performance based. You have to really look at your program, is it effective, and stop the major relapses, which has been notorious in this field for the last 20 to 30 years.
Gina Thorne: Yeah, I think you’re dead on. I think there’s more and more of that that needs to happen as far as a stronger sense of accountability of the services that are being provided, because people want to see effectiveness. We just can’t throw a dart and hope that it’s going to be okay. So your first time … No, not first time visit, you’ve been here before, but years ago, right?
John Stenzel: Years ago. Yes, many years ago.
Gina Thorne: Okay. Tell me about how you feel about Harmony.
John Stenzel: Well, I’m super impressed. I feel bad that I haven’t been here sooner again. I see such amazing changes, the integration of mental health services, and just the expansion of the programs and services, the expertise, the client services, the clinical team, medical, et cetera. It’s just really amazing.
Gina Thorne: Thank you. We’re thrilled to be able to build a partnership with A Healing Place. If someone who is listening to this podcast today wanted to access services at your program, how could they get in touch with you?
John Stenzel: Well, they can either call, we have a toll free number, and that number is 844-388-4100. That’s again, toll free. They can access our website, which is AHealingPlaceTheEstates.com. We have plenty of information. You can call me directly, my cell phone number is area code 818-618-0404, or contact anybody at the office, and ask for the admissions department or talk to any of the clinical people.
Gina Thorne: Sounds great. Thank you, John, for your time with us today.
John Stenzel: Thank you very much for having me.
Animal Assisted Therapy with Alyssa Overton
Think back in your mind to a moment when you had a genuine connection with an animal. What was it about that animal that you connected to? What kind of animal was it? Was it a pet of yours, someone else’s pet, or even a wild animal? Now consider what that animal did for you emotionally/internally. Maybe you cried over the animal, maybe you couldn’t stop smiling, or perhaps you were simply content to be in the presence of it. Whatever happened for you in that moment, you had a connection to that being that was powerful enough for it to make an imprint in your memory. It’s moments like these, of genuine bonding and connection with another being that are one of the greatest purposes and intentions of Animal-Assisted Therapy (AAT).
AAT is essentially the utilization of the human-animal bond in the therapeutic relationship, which means that the therapist and animal (typically dogs or horses) are actually performing goal-oriented activities with the client.
Some examples of this are as follows:
- Asking the client to teach the therapy dog a new trick. This reveals inner beliefs about oneself and one’s ability, as well as, it teaches patience and delay of gratification for client and animal.
- Inviting the client to lead a horse around an arena obstacle course. This challenges oneself to step into a leadership role with confidence and become internally grounded and congruent emotionally.
- Motivating clients to explore their boundaries with the therapy animal. This allows a client to explore their emotional/physical/energetic boundaries with another being who is safe and non-judgmental.
In treatment for individuals’ suffering from substance use disorders, these interventions and many others, offer experiential and alternative ways of exploring the 12-steps, boundaries, impulse control, healing from mental-health related issues, and so on. A 2016 study conducted by Helen Brooks validates that pets provide security and sense of order that can often lead to a sense of meaning in an individual’s life.
The beauty of AAT being practiced at Harmony is that this offering to our clients is highly unique. The opportunity for individuals’ in addiction treatment centers to be able to work with animals is up-and-coming, and not something that most facilities offer. Harmony is progressive in this way. As a Counselor and someone who also participates in the treatment of client’s at Harmony with mental health concerns, I encourage those of you reading this who are interested in AAT services to look into the Human-Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI) for more detailed and research-oriented information. HABRI offers significant resources that support the use of therapy animals, and even pets in general, in the treatment of addiction and mental health. For more information on how to train your own therapy animal to work in settings such as Harmony, please visit Therapy Dogs International, the American Kennel Club, and Denver’s Animal-Assisted Social Work Master’s program. Furthermore, please do not hesitate to comment or request further information from me, I appreciate and welcome any inquiry!
Author:
Alyssa Overton
MA Clinical Mental Health Counseling
Certified Animal-Assisted Therapist
Listen to her podcast here:
Harmony Foundation Annual Gala & 48th Alumni Reunion
JOIN US!
SEPTEMBER 22-23, 2017
It is an exciting year at Harmony and we want to celebrate with you!
We are proud to announce that Tara Conner, Miss USA 2006, will be our distinguished speaker at our Annual Gala. Tara will talk candidly about her struggles with addiction and her very public recovery. Joining us for a second year, Mackenzie Phillips will co-emcee our event with Kevin McKinnon. Join us for dinner, fellowship, generosity and hope.
We will have a variety of amazing auction items awaiting your bid! All money raised will go directly to the Harmony Scholarship Fund to provide treatment to those without means.
Special Thank You to Our Generous Sponsors 
Harmony Foundation, Inc. Announces New Chief Executive Officer
Estes Park, CO – June 20, 2017 – Harmony Foundation, Inc. announced that James Geckler, Chief Operating Officer, has been selected by the Board of Directors to succeed Dot Dorman as the organization’s next chief executive officer, effective July 1, 2017. Dorman and Geckler have worked side-by-side for over a year building a succession plan that would move Harmony Foundation to the next level.
Following thirty-two successful years with Harmony Foundation, nine most recently in her current role as CEO, Dorman made the personal decision to retire from the organization at the end of the fiscal year, allowing for a smooth and seamless leadership transition. She will remain involved as CEO Emerita through December 2017.
“Today, Harmony is a leader in the Colorado addiction treatment market with a strong foundation for continued growth in helping individuals recover from substance use disorders,” says Dorman. With the introduction of new treatment programs into Colorado and the ever changing landscape of addiction treatment services, Jim is the right leader at the right time to grow and build on our success, enhancing the recovery experience for our clients, families, staff, alumni and donors.”
As CEO, Dot delivered significant results for Harmony Foundation with growth in programming and campus expansion. The acquisition of Kingstone, the launch of a new state-of-the-art Health Center and Dining Pavilion, allowed for increases in clinical programming that would assist in medical detox, transitional living offering clients a amplified recovery experience.
Geckler has served the recovery community in a professional capacity for over 15 years, as former COO for A-I-R, one of the country’s premier intervention and family consulting groups to most recently as a senior leader at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. Jim joined the Harmony Foundation team in February 2016 as Chief Operating Officer providing leadership and support to members of the Nursing, Admissions, Development, Dietary, Housekeeping and Maintenance teams.
Harmony’s commitment to a healthy succession plan enabled the Board to evaluate the key leader who can take the organization to the next level. The Board unanimously agreed that Geckler is the perfect leader for this role.
“We are pleased to have an internal leader with Jim’s experience, national presence and commitment to recovery to chart next steps for Harmony that will increase access to treatment for consumers, continue to build an organizational culture that values our employees and offer recovery support services to alumni.” said Patricia Nielson, Board President, Harmony’s Foundation. “Jim has been a substantial asset to the organization over the last year, building staff leadership; introducing operational changes that helped us remain relevant positioning us to be a national leader of addiction treatment services.” The Board is confident he will guard the philosophy of Harmony and its legacy while imbedding new opportunities that will carry the mission of our organization to the next level.” The Dorman era at Harmony, will be long remembered for program and campus expansion, consistent leadership and three decades of commitment to recovery in the Rockies.”
Beginning July 1st, Geckler will work collaboratively with senior leadership and members of the Harmony team to execute the recently Board approved strategic plan. Efforts will focus on an increase in technology resources, advances to clinical programming including trauma informed care and mental health services and philanthropic giving to provide greater access to addiction treatment services for clients at Harmony.
“I’m honored to be given the opportunity to lead this organization with such a powerful legacy, honorable and ethical reputation and incredible talent – a combination that I believe sets us apart in this field,” Geckler said. “Our success will be based upon “always doing the right thing” for our clients and families. Building upon the foundation Dot and many others within Harmony have established over the years, we will be focused on continuing to be the leader in the addiction treatment industry not just regionally but nationally.”
Barbara Jo Kammer to Release Debut CD
One song at a time. That’s how Colorado’s Barbara Jo Kammer approaches her passion as a music therapist, her life as a performer, and it’s how she navigated the challenging journey to recovery from decades of alcohol addiction. One Song at a Time also happens to be the fitting title of Kammer’s debut solo album.
Read More:
http://www.gratefulweb.com/articles/barbara-jo-kammer-release-debut-cd