Aaron: CBHC stands for Community Behavioral Health Center and is a one stop shop for a number of substance use and mental health treatment programs including urgent and emergency services, crisis stabilization, individual and family therapy services and care coordination with primary care. The services are available for youth, families and adults. 

Aaron: People with MassHealth are eligible to receive all CBHC services. Children, adults and families with other health insurances or no health insurance can receive urgent and emergency care. We are working hard to serve as many people as we can. Call us to find out how we can help you. 

Aaron:  We have two main locations. One in Lynn and the other in Danvers. 

The Lynn CBHC will primarily serve the communities of Lynn, Lynnfield, Melrose, Nahant, North Reading, Reading, Salem, Saugus, Stoneham, Swampscott, and Wakefield.

The Danvers CBHC will service primarily Amesbury, Beverly, Boxford, Danvers, Essex, Georgetown, Gloucester, Groveland, Hamilton, Haverhill, Ipswich, Manchester by the Sea, Marblehead, Merrimac, Middleton, Newbury, Newburyport, Peabody, Rockport, Rowley, Salisbury, Topsfield, Wenham, and West Newbury. 

No one will be turned away. Even if you don’t live in these towns, we are committed to serving you.

Aaron:  Our CBHCs use a team approach giving us the expertise and experience to address all of the needs of a person in a holistic manner. In addition to therapists and psychiatrists , there will be case managers, recovery coaches, peers, family partners, nurses and more. It is not a one size fits all approach. Treatment will be customized to get people what they need.

We will be offering individual and group therapy. We will also be helping people with their daily needs such as food or housing insecurity by connecting them with our other services.

Aaron:  CBHC services are focused on keeping people in their community whenever possible so we are no longer concentrated on going to emergency rooms for crisis situations. We are responding to kids, adults, and families in their community to treat and stabilize them right away. In some instances, we will also bring people into our offices for further stabilization efforts.  

In addition, we will work with people to prevent future crises with long term care as long as care is needed. 

Aaron:  Yes It is important that our staff reflect the communities we serve and effectively communicate in the language most comfortable for our clients .

Aaron:  Yes, they will be open 24 hours, 7 days a week. 

Aaron:  No, they don’t need to change their therapist. They can still receive stabilization and short term care from us. If they are already in long term care and want to stay with their therapist, they can choose to do that. 

Aaron:  Yes, there are different teams and staff dedicated to adults and children to meet the unique needs of each population.  

Aaron:  Our main goal is to provide evidence based treatments to people where and when they need them in a holistic way by connecting behavioral health services with support to overcome other life challenges. We don’t want people to wait unnecessarily.  We want to help people immediately. 

Another goal is to reduce the reliance on emergency departments which are not equipped to treat and care for people with behavioral health issues and prevent unnecessary hospitalizations. The idea is to increase access to all levels of care. We will engage people in the most supportive setting possible to avoid long waits in emergency rooms. We will do this by offering urgent and long term care to avert crises from escalating. 

Finally, we want to reduce and eventually eliminate, if we can, deaths by suicide. We are implementing a full zero suicide service through CBHCs where we will train all clinicians in developing safety plans and providing treatment for suicidality called Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS). CAMS is a flexible therapeutic framework in which patient and provider work together to assess the patient's suicidal risk and use that information to plan and manage suicide-specific, “driver-oriented” treatment.

Eliot is excited to be a part of this exciting chapter and proud to be further serving the needs of our communities.