Mobile Mental Health
The individuals targeted for the program are some of the most difficult to engage and serve of the HIV infected population – individuals who in addition to mental illness are also often struggling with substance use. The long-term goal of the Mobile Mental Health Program is to move these individuals along the continuum of care to higher threshold services and on to recovery from mental illness and total management of their HIV disease. The program team accomplishes this by helping re-engage or retain clients in care at Harlem United through individually tailored and culturally sensitive mental health counseling and/or crisis intervention, individual and family counseling and psychotherapy, support groups, medication management and treatment adherence, and risk reduction education.
The program is designed to enhance the agency’s existing broad continuum of care by providing intensive services to clients and by building on the agency’s success in establishing the trusting bond so necessary to drawing and maintaining clients in care. The program provides services to clients in their homes or other settings where they feel most comfortable. This provision of mental health and HIV related services in a non-traditional setting breaks through individuals’ barriers of distrust and stigmatization and ensures access to mental health services to clients where and when they need them. In providing specialized mental health and substance use services, clients have a greater chance of success in managing their HIV and co-existing mental health and related disorders.
