I think what the Sutherland Center does so well is education....
Last summer, our pro bono psychiatrist, Dr. Gregg Olsen,
spoke about psychoeducation:
"Psychiatrists can do education during the course of an appointment. But an eight week Seminar Series... it’s invaluable for many clients to help them understand their illness and understand how to treat it, to help them come to terms that they have the illness.
What I always encourage people is that I’ve never seen anybody that we’ve not been able to successfully treat. The more difficult thing is to successfully maintain somebody. Once they’re on a good treatment regimen, they stick with that consistently. The Sutherland Center-- its big strength is on education, and I think psychoeducation is so important.
A lot of calls that I’ll get are from family members saying, 'How do we best support them? What is it that we can do?' If I could spend eight weeks, an hour and a half a week, so 12 hours…? I barely get 15 minutes to educate a patient in one appointment. And again that’s based on their financial resources. The Sutherland Center makes it more accessible to more people, and probably for people who need the most education, again because they have limited resources."
Listen to a 3-minute audio clip here....
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