Home > Our Services > Intensive Outpatient Care Services

 

Intensive outpatient care is provided at multiple sites in the city for clients who are at risk of relapse unless they receive more intensive services than standard outpatient care. This community treatment ensures that clients have a lifestyle that is as independent, healthy, and productive as possible.

 

The individualized services include:

 

Assistance with Accessing Community Resources

 

Clients in the intensive outpatient treatment program not only have a therapist and psychiatrist, they also have access to a case manager who can help them with such challenges as applying for social security benefits, getting to see their family doctor, shopping for clothes, finding housing, renewing their driving license, seeing their probation officer, getting bus passes, and other essentials of their daily life. We can even help clients manage their daily money allowance to be sure that it is spent appropriately and not on street drugs or other non-constructive items.

 

Individual and Group Therapy

 

Every person enrolled in intensive outpatient treatment is assigned a therapist who participates in the weekly treatment planning meeting with the team’s psychiatrists and other treatment staff. Therapists provide an array of services from cognitive behavioral therapy to dialectical behavior therapy to substance use counseling.  We offer two coexisting disorders groups in which people with psychiatric illness, like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, discuss their substance abuse problems, and a dialectical behavior therapy group which grapples with problems arising from embedded personality attributes.

 

Medication Management and Monitoring

 

Colorado Recovery has three psychiatrists who evaluate outpatient clients as often as necessary, sometimes more often than once a week, to prescribe an effective medication regimen – a regimen which may vary from day to day depending on the current state of the illness. Those patients who are doing well may only see the psychiatrist once every few weeks or months.

Clients who have had a problem complying with treatment recommendations can attend our outpatient program seven days a week and receive their prescribed medications from the outpatient staff to ensure compliance.

 

Family Counseling and Support

 

We like to stay in close and continuing contact with family members. When clients enter treatment, we ask each one to sign a “release of information” form which permits us to provide ongoing treatment information to their relatives. We stay in contact with family members face-to-face or by phone or e-mail.
 
We also offer an online forum for our clients and their family members that provides access to a large library of information about schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and the treatment and consequences of these illnesses. The forum also offers an opportunity for people with serious mental illness and their family members to exchange information with others in similar situations. This supportive and educational online forum is facilitated by our staff and psychiatrists who can offer advice and channel constructive discussions of vital issues. They are assisted in facilitating discussion by trained family members and people who have themselves experienced serious mental illness in the past.

 

Psychiatric Services
 
We have three psychiatrists who evaluate outpatient clients as often as necessary, sometimes more often than once a week, to prescribe an effective medication regimen – a regimen which may vary from day-to-day depending on the current state of the illness. Those patients who are doing well may only see the psychiatrist every few weeks. Our three psychiatrists are Dr. Richard Warner, Dr. Cynthia Dafler and Dr. Julia Maximon. Each has an extensive background in treating people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder and other forms of serious mental illness.

 

Supported Employment and Educational Support

 

Colorado Recovery emphasizes productive activity as an important element in recovery from mental disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder. Our vocational staff help clients get back to school, get into a volunteer job or find paid employment. Some clients go out in supervised groups to volunteer their time at local nonprofit agencies such as the Emergency Family Assistance Association, the Boulder County Humane Society or the Farmers’ Market. In these environments we can evaluate each person’s work potential.

We have a vocational and social club with strong involvement of people who have experienced mental illness which serves as a base for connecting our clients with work opportunities and services from our vocational staff.

 

An unlimited number of sessions with the client’s therapist and case manager are provided in the intensive outpatient program, as well as frequent medication management meetings with the client’s psychiatrist.