MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELING

Counseling offers patients with mental health problems a secure environment to work through their issues. Tony Akpengbe, DNP, and the Diligence Care Plus team in San Bernardino, California, provide expert therapies for people with depression, bipolar disorder, substance use disorder, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders. They can also help with experiences like grief and trauma. Call the office to arrange your mental health counseling appointment or schedule a consultation online today.

MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELING Q & A

What is mental health counseling?

Mental health counseling uses talking therapies to help you recover from psychiatric disorders or manage those that aren’t curable. Many mental health counseling therapies are available. Common ones include:

Behavioral therapies

Behavioral approaches like cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) examine how your condition affects daily life. First, your therapist helps you recognize thoughts and feelings that cause you problems. Then they teach you to challenge and change harmful ones so they don’t hold you back.

Psychoanalytic therapies

Psychoanalysis focuses on uncovering memories and experiences that harm your mental health, such as trauma and abuse. People often repress distressing memories, but doing this can prevent you from processing the memories and moving on. Psychoanalysis identifies underlying problems and works through them with you.

Mental health counseling helps you understand your condition and why it causes harmful emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.

What problems can mental health counseling help me with?

Mental health counseling is the primary treatment for most psychiatric and behavioral disorders, including:

• Depression (major depressive disorder)
• Bipolar disorder
• Substance use disorder (addiction)
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
• Anxiety disorders and phobias
• Schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder
• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
• Eating disorders
• Personality disorders

Mental health counseling is also invaluable for helping people through life’s challenges, like a loved one’s death, job loss, a failed relationship, or long-term illness.

What happens when I have mental health counseling?

Diligence Care Plus mental health counseling sessions are confidential, unbiased meetings where you can openly discuss your feelings and thoughts without judgment.

Therapists design each patient’s treatment program according to their problems, how severely the condition affects them, and the type of therapy that best suits them. The first stage is a comprehensive assessment of your medical and mental health history, symptom evaluation, and discussion about your home and work life.

In addition to mental health counseling, you might benefit from medication, especially for moderate to severe psychiatric disorders. Antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, and other medicines reduce symptom severity – so you can gain more from mental health counseling.

Call Diligence Care Plus today to find out more, or request a mental health counseling appointment using the online booking tool.