How the Departments at Our Clarkston Outpatient Mental Health Practice Work Together

Triad Counseling Centers is organized into departments so that different kinds of clinical need can be met under one roof without the client having to assemble care themselves. Someone may only ever need one department. Others move between two or three — therapy alongside medication management, or testing first to clarify a diagnosis before treatment begins.

The departments share information about a client only with written permission, and coordination is documented in the clinical record so that no one is working from an incomplete picture.

Outpatient Therapy Treatment for Children, Adolescents, and Adults With Mental Health or Substance Use Diagnoses

Triad’s Outpatient Therapy department provides intensive clinical therapeutic services to children, adolescents, and adults with an identified mental health or substance abuse diagnosis. This service is designed to meet the specific mental health needs of the identified client as they relate to their diagnosis.

Our team of therapists — comprised of psychologists, social workers, and licensed professional counselors — treats a diverse area of presenting problems. Outpatient therapy includes psycho-educational activities and interventions designed to assist the client in the reduction of dysfunction. Services are provided with client-centered and family-centered approaches and are delivered through intensive, time-limited, goal-specific interventions.

Those labels describe genuinely different methods, not house styles. Which one a therapist reaches for depends on the concern, the client’s age, and what the evidence supports for that presentation.

Psychiatry Department: Diagnostic Evaluation and Medication Management for Children, Adolescents, and Adults

Psychiatry is the branch of medicine focused on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. Triad’s psychiatry department conducts comprehensive evaluations and medication reviews for Triad patients, and serves children, adolescents, and adults.

It is Triad’s policy that psychiatry patients are also in outpatient therapy treatment at Triad. That policy exists for a clinical reason. Medication and therapy do different jobs, and the evidence for combined treatment is stronger than for either one alone across most common conditions. Pairing them also means the prescriber and the therapist are looking at the same person from two angles rather than working blind to one another.

Groups Department: Clinician-Led Group Therapy for Clients Working Toward Shared Goals

Group therapy is designed to increase awareness of one’s self and others, and to help facilitate change with the guidance of a therapist — but with the support of like individuals working toward the same goals.

Groups tend to do something individual therapy structurally cannot. Hearing a stranger describe your own experience back to you takes the edge off the belief that you are the only one, and practicing a difficult conversation in a room of people is closer to real life than practicing it one-to-one. For clients dealing with isolation, social anxiety, substance use, or grief, that is often the part of treatment that moves things.

Psychological Testing for Diagnostic Clarification, ADHD, IQ, and Pre-Surgical Evaluation

Testing answers questions that clinical conversation alone cannot settle. It uses standardized instruments with established norms, which is what allows a result to be compared against a comparison group rather than against a clinician’s impression. Triad has historically conducted testing in the following areas.

Which Department a New Client Usually Starts With, and How Care Moves Between Them

Most people start in outpatient therapy. The intake appointment is where the picture gets clearer, and referrals to other departments follow from that rather than being decided in advance.

Where These Departments Sit Among Behavioral Health Levels of Care in Michigan

Every department described here operates on an outpatient basis. Clients live at home, keep their job or school schedule, and attend scheduled appointments. Outpatient is the least restrictive level of behavioral health care and the level most people need.

It is not the right level for everyone at every moment. Acute safety concerns, medically supervised withdrawal, and instability that scheduled appointments cannot contain all call for something more intensive. When that is the case, saying so plainly and helping a client reach the appropriate level of care is part of the job, not a failure of it.