Mental Health Group

Mental Health Group

The Mental Health group provides an opportunity for participants to develop an increased understanding of their mental illness by learning the signs/symptoms associated with mental health diagnoses, as well as utilizing healthy coping skills, staff/peer support, and medication compliance to assist with managing negative emotions and inappropriate behaviors associated their mental illness. The group is designed to enhance participants’ knowledge of their diagnoses and how severe mental illness affects their daily living. Co-occurring Disorders, including substance abuse and intellectual disabilities are a focus to help participants connect how one diagnosis potentially impacts another while learning ways to effectively manage them both. The group focuses on an array of mental health issues and disorders such as Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, etc to assist participants in gaining a better understanding themselves and each other while promoting and improving socialization. 

There are specialized substance abuse groups regarding alcohol, marijuana, cocaine/crack, heroin and prescription drugs that promote increasing awareness of sign/symptoms of addiction and what participants can do to seek help. The Substance Abuse Groups focuses on the negative interaction that illicit drugs can have with psychotropic medications. These groups focus on the negative impact of substituting illicit drugs for their prescribed medication and how illicit drugs affects their mood, behavior and physical health. The The Empowerment Center Staff utilizes psychoeducation, group discussion, structured activities, guest speakers and videos in effort to increase substance abuse awareness.

All mental health groups are structured to include participants with different mental health diagnoses, age, race, gender, and levels of functioning. Group structure is determined by participants’ level of functioning. Group are determined by ensuring that all participants involved have the opportunity to take an active role in helping each other learn about their mental health diagnoses, symptoms, triggers, common behaviors, and preferred treatment methods. Participants strive to meet treatment goals through psycho-education, group discussion, role play, art therapy, collages, written tasks, meditation, guided imagery, and other structured activities

Medical Health Group 

The Medical Health Group focuses on increasing participants’ awareness and knowledge of medical health diagnoses that impact their lives such as hypertension, diabetes, hyper/hypothyroidism, COPD, Seizure Disorder and High Cholesterol. Participants learn signs/symptoms of their diagnoses in additions to precautions to reduce the likelihood of being negatively impacted and ways to manage diagnosis appropriately. The Medical Health group includes daily physical fitness such as group exercise, line dancing, Zumba, interactive video games, and fresh air walks that promote healthy lifestyle changes to assist with managing medical health concern