So I finalized the field placement today. It's at and agency in Flint that works with severe mental health clients (consumers is their preferred term). In this day and age when everyone is mentally ill, there is now a distinction between severe mental illness and mental illness (I love it). Severe mental illness would be clients with a dx of a form of schizophrenia, bi-polar and personality disorders.
The clinic uses the ACT approach which is great and I will discuss more later. Basically the clinic has a team of case managers (how awesome is that, no more case management for me!!!), therapists, psychiatric nurses and psychiatrists that work with the clients that would formerly be institutionalized to keep them functioning as well as possible in society. Most work is done with the clients (consumers) and their families (if they have any left) in their homes. The only time they come to the office is for group and to meet with the shrink.
I will be an additional dual diagnosis therapist since the current one is overburdened. Fun fun fun. Over the summer I do have some reading to do on personality disorders, and maybe a little on the other two but I am pretty well versed in those :)
I opted for a 3 day placement so that I can cut down on driving to Detroit for classes by using more credits for internship, so I now only have one elective to take along with my theory classes. I decided to go with conflict resolution (because it is 100% online).
Financial aide is the only worry I have at this point. I only have til April to be done and hopefully I can get through these last two semesters, because of course I am taking more credits than any other semester too. Having a 3 day internship is going to cut down on working time unless I work/attend class 7 days a week. YIKES, this is going to be interesting.
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