Therapist I

About the role

The Therapist I position requires excellence in performing multiple psychotherapies including, but not limited to, acceptance and commitment therapy, cognitive behavioral, mindfulness, behavioral activation, dialectical behavioral, interpersonal, supportive, motivational interviewing, graded exposure, and ritual prevention, solution-focused, desensitization, couples, family, grief, and trauma therapies. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is also preferred. Such therapies will be provided in both one-to-one and group settings.

Responsibilities

• Complete initial intakes and diagnostic assessments on all clients referred into the Behavioral Health Program.
• Develop initial treatment plans and update treatment plans to include age-appropriate clinical interventions/objectives/goals that are observable and measurable.
• Provide quality clinical consultation to providers and staff in areas of individual, family, child and adolescent, regarding mental and behavioral health related issues.
• Perform assessment and DSM-V/ICD-10 diagnostics for patients referred by medical staff of Adelante Healthcare.
• Provide brief, evidence-based, solution-focused behavioral interventions with active development of psychotherapeutic/psychoeducational behavioral change planning.
• Cultivate education, administration, and self-management skills for targeted populations with psychological issues impacting physical and/or behavioral health issues.
• Promote Adelante practitioners’ knowledge of patient behavioral health issues and provider education to assist with enhancing primary care utilization of behavioral health interventions.
• Promote a smooth interface between care provided throughout the organization and the community’s specialized mental/behavioral health system.
• Collaborate and co-manage the patient’s behavioral health care with consistent, expeditious feedback to referring practitioners.
• Provide on-site availability for crisis triage and intervention.
• Document the clinical behavioral health aspect of patient interventions and track patient referrals to specialty behavioral health care.
• Attend monthly department staffing and weekly supervision meetings.
• Monitor patients in a patient registry and aid in making recommendations for a portion of these patients by record review without seeing the patients.
• Contact patients at predefined intervals for those who are missing appointments, meeting treatment plan goals, or as otherwise required.
• Coordinate care and ensure patients obtain referrals to outside sources or back to their primary care team after completing treatment plan goals.
• Upon discharge from specialty services, implement a relapse prevention plan with each patient.
• Perform initial assessments of patients.
• Manage psychosocial aspects of chronic and acute diseases and apply behavioral principles to address lifestyle and health risk issues.
• Emphasize prevention and self-help approaches, partnering with patients in a treatment approach that builds resiliency and encourages personal responsibility for health.
• Provide consultation and co-management in the co-treatment of mental disorders and psychosocial issues within a fully-integrated, multidisciplinary model within primary care Health Centers.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in the Behavioral Health field (Psychology, Social Work).
• Computer literacy is required.
• Bilingual (English/Spanish) is preferred.
• Excellent working knowledge of behavioral medicine and evidence-based treatments for medical and mental health conditions.
• Ability to work through brief patient contacts as well as to make quick and accurate clinical assessments of mental and behavioral conditions.
• Comfort with the pace of primary care, working with an interdisciplinary team, and strong communication skills.
• Good knowledge of psychopharmacology.
• Ability to design and implement clinical pathways and protocols for treatment of selected chronic conditions.
• Certification to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation for the health care professional (CPR) and AED through courses that follow the guidelines from the American Heart Association and Red Cross (cognitive and skills evaluations).
• Valid Level One Fingerprint Clearance Card issued by the Arizona Department of Public Safety for all specialty behavioral health locations.

Skills

• Proficiency with electronic medical records and office computers and software.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with primary care providers, integrated behavioral health team, medical assistants, nursing, and others.