HEALTHY WOMAN: Outpatient Behavioral Health Center

COURTESY OF THE SYRACUSE BEHAVIORAL HEALTH CENTER

The newly opened behavioral health center operated by Syracuse Behavioral Healthcare on North Salina Street is significantly improving access to behavioral healthcare for women.

The new center features state-of-the-art care for women. It offers not only the counseling associated with mental health, substance use and gambling disorders, but also a health care suite that addresses health management issues like medication management and other screenings, as well as a childcare component.

The childcare component allows women to leave their child with qualified staff while they are in counseling or medical appointments at the center. Women often require addiction treatment after extended histories of abuse than men require because of their caregiving roles to children. This prevents them from accessing treatment.

Moreover, having a robust spectrum of behavioral health services under one roof allows the easier management and coordination of those services for people already challenged with busy, often overloaded schedules.

Experience has shown that children whose parents get help for behavioral health issues experience less trauma after the treatment. Additionally those parents are better equipped to see the warning signs of disorders that may emerge in their children.

The positive impact for women is not an accident. SBH CEO Jeremy Klemanski shared that “in the vision for the new center, a primary concern was removing the barriers that often prevent women from accessing behavioral health services.”

SBH operates other specialty programs for women because it has a strong commitment to the concept of improving families. “We noticed as we surveyed program designs that many did not account for the needs of women specifically,” Klemanski said. “We thought if we designed programs that did we could change the disparity in some forms of behavioral health care for women.”

For more information on outpatient services and any other SBH program, log on to www.sbh.org. If you would like to learn more about SBH, please contact Jason Torreano at jasont@sbh.org or call (315) 474-5506, ext. 221.