Healing starts here

Mending Minds is a primary mental health outpatient program that’s located in Orange County, CA. 

Our goal for each client essentially is to leave here with a better quality of life than they came here with. We don’t necessarily know what it looks like because it’s based on the individual. The way we do things here is more of a bespoke treatment experience. 

Based on what they’re needing to get out of treatment, our clinical prowess, and the work that our client does, that is what really says how well somebody does. 

We lay all the tools at your feet but there’s work that’s required by the client. Our goal is for our clients to feel healthy and happy, and able to connect with family friends and community

Mental Health treatment and Substance Use Disorder treatment are somewhat similar, because there are aspects of each that contribute to one or the other, but there are certain differences between them as well. 

With mental health treatment, we see people come to us knowing no other way of living than living this way. People who have never used a substance before only know how to cope with their life in the way that their body does naturally. So there are people who don’t have substance abuse issues but struggle with mental health deficits.

With substance use disorder treatment, there are a lot of outside influences that can lead to addiction. From an uninformed standpoint people might think that addiction is based on a moral failing, however, that’s not the case. Many people develop substance use disorder because of external factors such as family history, or long term usage of prescription drugs, stress, etc. Many people who come into Substance Use Disorder treatment have a lot of mental health issues due to living that life, and doing things that way.

On a typical day at Mending Minds, our clients usually show up anywhere between 8.45 and 9 AM. Programming starts promptly at 9 AM, they program through until 12 noon, then a break from 12 to 12:30 PM for lunch, and the afternoon is when we usually have most of our experiential modalities.

Our experiential modalities include home economics, healthy coping skills, learning how to heal your relationships with food or self, etc. Our modalities are very loaded, meaning there’s not a lot of repeat programs that go on in a 30-day cycle. There are other treatment centers where clients get bored after a few days of the same programming. Our goal here is to not only make mental health treatment accessible but also to make it interesting. Our aim is to show our clients that there’s nothing wrong with them, that it is possible to have fun, and be a normal person.

Your diagnosis does not define you, because if it did we’d all be looking a lot different, we’d all be living a lot different, if we let what we’ve been through define who we are as people.

Anybody who’s struggling with something as simple as anxiety, or something as complex as a multiple personality disorder. 

As a program, we do require medical compliance. We can’t take in somebody who’s in an active episode because we’re not sure what their history looks like. From a medical standpoint it would put all of us more at ease if we had messages from their doctors, a bio-psychology assessment, their medication list, because all of these need to be looked at prior to admitting.

That really depends on what the client wants to do. We do not force a client to involve family in their treatment, because it’s their treatment, therefore it’s their choice. We have no insight into what somebody’s trauma history looks like with their family. So we would never force anybody to take part in family sessions.

However we do have family group therapy sessions. If somebody asks for updates they get updates. If somebody asks for a family session, if the client is willing, they get a family session. 

Addiction is a family illness: there’s always somebody else who’s affected – it’s never just the person who’s suffering or afflicted.