Behavioral Health Consultation
Curry Health Network (CHN) provides Behavioral Health Consultation services to all patients empaneled to a CHN provider within our outpatient clinics as a part of good overall health care. Carley Cantwell, LCSW offers visits 3 weeks per month via telemedicine, and is onsite one week per month to serve the needs of our patients.
What is a Behavioral Health Consultation?
A behavioral health consultation offers assistance when habits, behaviors, stress, worry, or emotional concerns about physical or other life problems are interfering with your daily life or overall health. The Behavioral Health Consultant (BHC) works with your CHN Primary Care Provider (PCP) to evaluate the mind-body-behavior connection and provides brief, solution-focused interventions.
Our BHC is able to provide behavioral management of health problems. Together, the BHC and your PCP can consider the physical, behavioral, and emotional aspects of your health concern and help determine a course of action that will work best for you.
What kind of health concerns are seen?
A BHC can help you reduce symptoms associated with various chronic medical conditions or help you cope better with these conditions such as headaches, sleep, high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, obesity, chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, and others.The BHC can help you and your PCP develop behavioral change plans for smoking cessation, weight loss, alcohol use, exercise, or other lifestyle modifications in addition to developing skills to effectively manage emotional or behavioral difficulties such as anger, anxiety, bereavement, depression, and stress.
What you can expect when you see the Behavioral Health Consultant
You can expect the BHC to ask you specific questions about your physical symptoms, the emotional concerns you are experiencing, your behaviors, and how all of these might be related. You can expect your appointments to last about 30 minutes and for the BHC to provide brief, solution-focused assessment and intervention.You can also expect to be seen in the clinic and for the BHC to have a close working relationship with your PCP. Remember, you and your PCP remain in charge of your health care; the BHC's primary role is to help you and your PCP develop and implement the best integrated health care plan for you!
How this service differs from Mental Health Services
The services provided by the Behavioral Health Consultant are simply another part of your overall health care and are not specialty mental health care. Documentation of your appointment and recommendations from the BHC will be written in your medical record. A separate mental health record will not be kept when you see the BHC.Communications with your BHC may not be entirely confidential. Your BHC will make every effort to protect your privacy. However, like all Providers, they may have to report information regarding child or spouse abuse, or share information regarding those at risk to harm themselves or others.
The BHC does not provide traditional psychotherapy. If you request, or the BHC thinks you would benefit from, specialty mental health services, the BHC will recommend that you and your PCP consider those services.
