What Makes AWARE Psychiatry Different?

This article will focus on how Psychiatry at AWARE is special, the types of services we offer, and why a prospective patient may want to choose AWARE for their psychiatric care needs. In the last issue of INK, this writer explained what psychiatry is, how it differs from other similar disciplines, who can practice psychiatry, what psychiatry providers do, and who might benefit from psychiatric care. To summarize that article, psychiatry is the medical practice concerned with the study, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness, and anyone with a mental illness may benefit from psychiatric care from a Psychiatrist (physician) or Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) in addition to evaluation or treatment from related specialists like psychologists and therapists.  

AWARE Psychiatry is different because as individuals, and as an organization, we are different.  Every step we take is in service of our mission to help people lead independent lives, navigated by our AWARE Core Values – Integrity, Resiliency, Innovation, and Community. Integrity means providing the highest quality care to all persons-served no matter the challenges. Psychiatric care at AWARE builds resiliency by focusing on individual and family strengths. Our psychiatric services are ever evolving through innovation in collaborative care delivery to meet the unique needs of our patients. Our specialty is wrap-around, people-oriented services of and for the communities we serve. The following paragraphs explain how AWARE Psychiatry operationalizes these values.  

Everyone deserves the best psychiatric care for themselves and their loved ones – and yet finding that care can be very difficult. Many mental health providers in Montana are inaccessible to those most in need due to distance, long waitlists, finances, and other barriers. At AWARE, we serve everyone, regardless of background, insurance status, or ability to pay. We also take on and stick with the “tough” cases. Our psychiatry providers have worked with so many families who tell us no one would work with them, until they called us. We could easily switch to accepting only cash or private insurance, taking only “high functioning” patients, and hiring providers who prefer a cushy, lucrative lifestyle… but we will never do that. We do what we do because our commitment to integrity means doing the right thing, not the easy thing.  

Everyone embodies a unique set of strengths and has experienced their own challenges – these are the building blocks of resiliency. Humans are innately capable of healing themselves if they have the right kind of support. AWARE psychiatry providers employ strengths-based approaches to help our patients overcome barriers, diagnoses, and even traumas. Resiliency work is a pillar of trauma-responsive treatment. We flip the script from “what’s wrong with you?” to “what happened to you?” and “how can we help you to help yourself move forward?” Our patients do not need “fixing,” they need care, assistance, and hope. AWARE psychiatric providers provide tools, sometimes including medications, which persons-served can use to heal and thrive.  

Everyone needs a slightly different approach to meet them where they’re at – preferably one from this century. Montanans have always found a way to do things our own way out of necessity due to the remoteness of our frontier state, and AWARE was born out of that same sense of scrappiness. Innovation is the name of the game here. AWARE is consistently on the cutting-edge of technologies and approaches to bring support to our people when and where they need it. We were offering high-quality telepsychiatry long before the pandemic. AWARE has invested in physician-led team-based care that allows our small but mighty group of providers to support more individuals, families, and teams. This type of collaborative care model, born partly from necessity at AWARE, is only recently catching on nationwide. AWARE Psychiatry is also constantly evolving to offer services in unique settings, like schools, residential homes, and in the community.  

Everyone knows that it “takes a village” to raise a child – but why stop there?  Our need for belonging is written in our DNA no matter our age; lack of connection is physically, emotionally, and spiritually harmful. Community is everything, and AWARE is an organization of and for the community. Our offices stand in the heart of the towns we serve, and our services are braided into the fabric of our communities. AWARE Psychiatry can offer stand-alone services, but we generally encourage a wrap-around care approach, along with the other services AWARE provides. Wrap-around care is grounded in the holistic belief that it takes a team to be and stay well. Additionally, as contributing members of our Montana communities, AWARE Psychiatry providers are actively involved in education, collaboration, partnership, and advocacy for improved mental healthcare on the local and state level.  

While our patients can seek psychiatric care anywhere, the care they receive at AWARE is truly unique and fundamentally different from what they might find elsewhere. The decisions that guide the AWARE Psychiatry service line are grounded in our core values of Integrity, Resiliency, Innovation, and Community.  We think this is the special sauce that makes our patients seek us out and continue their care with us. This focus on values also informs our hiring – we only bring on providers who embody these same values.  

Be sure to check out our next issue of Ink to learn more about how to refer clients to the AWARE Psychiatry service line and what to expect!   

In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more or make a referral to AWARE’s Psychiatry team, visit www.aware-inc.org/psychiatry.