Mental Health of Adolescents

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I had a reputation in the community for the services that I provided. I was well known at the hospital and amongst therapists that were not OT's and also the psychiatrists. The child and adolescent psychiatrist that I worked with at the hospital also had outpatients. He was a steady referral source for me so that worked out very well. I will say that you will probably need to have the skills from previous work with adolescents before you go into their homes. You need some experience as you go into a home, like the home I mentioned where the family was screaming at each other all the time. If you have not seen that type of situation before, it could be very startling or off-putting. That was very helpful to go into people's houses, and it also gives you a picture of what family life is like. There is no way you can see that in other treatment settings. It was also cost-effective as I did not need an office as I was completing therapy at their homes.

One of the things that made it helpful and doable for me, and also for families, was that I did not accept insurance. Most of the time, insurance companies do not reimburse very well or they limit people's amount of time that they can spend in therapy. I did my visits on a cash fee for service basis. I also had some contracts from places like a foster care agency where we would have a fee for service that they sent me. Eventually I saw the need to have an office. That was very successful because there are also problems that arise from having other siblings at the household. I had one instance where a sibling of a client was starting to act out because he wanted a person like me to come to their house to see them instead of their sibling.