Founded in 1969, Communicare is the Community Mental Health Center serving the Northeaster Counties of Mississippi , including Calhoun, DeSoto, Lafayette, Marshall, Panola, Tate, and Yalobusha. Communicare's staff includes licensed professionals in psychiatry, psychology, nursing, social work, counseling, and marriage and family therapy. Associate clinical staff, working under the supervision of licensed staff, include case managers, counselors, and paraprofessionals. Communicare also networks with the professional training departments at local universities to provide advanced graduate students the opportunity to practice under professional supervision and offers a post-doctoral residency placement in clinical psychology. Communicare's current staff totals 125 persons, including clinical professionals (mental health and substance abuse) and business management professionals. Communicare is governed by the North Mississippi Commission on Mental Illness and Mental Retardation. There are seven members on the Commission, each appointed by the Board of Supervisors in their respective counties.
While Communicare offers treatment services to persons of all ages and diagnoses, special emphasis is placed on services for adults with serious mental illness, children with serious emotional disturbances, and individuals with ATOD addiction. In August 2001, Communicare opened its
new substance abuse services building. This facility provides residential care for adults (primary and extended treatment), outpatient treatment, family services, and offers specialized treatment services for dually-diagnosed patients (e.g. patients with both mental illness and substance abuse problems). In addition to providing direct service to patients, Communicare consults with other health care service providers in the community to assist with treatment planning, as well as provides assistance to local colleagues in social services, education, and business who may have mental health or substance abuse problems. In general, Communicare seeks to provide quality services to its patients and their families, to be a helpful resource to other professionals, and to integrate mental health and ATOD treatment into the general community.
In terms of community collaboration, Communicare participates in several interagency service organizations designed to bring together various health and social service providers. Such groups include the child development councils in Calhoun and Desoto County , the interagency counsels in Lafayette , Panola, and Desoto Counties , and the child abuse task forces in Lafayette , Panola, and Tate Counties . Communicare has also developed a system of care in local school systems through which Communicare clinicians work on-site with students providing outpatient treatment, day treatment, early intervention, and consultation services to students and educators. These community collaborations provide vehicles for providing community based substance abuse prevention activities.
For the past 10 years, Communicare has received funding annually for substance abuse prevention services from the Mississippi Department of Mental Health. This funding, which partially underwrites Communicare's prevention activities, originates in the federal substance abuse block grant awarded to the State. Prevention funds have been targeted toward children, adolescents, and college-aged populations (including the University of Mississippi – located in Communicare's service area). A second target population has been adults and their families at risk for or in the early stages of substance abuse. Two general goals for Communicare's prevention program have been to prevent ATOD experimentation by youth and to encourage persons (child and adult) who have already experimented to discontinue abuse. Communicare also provides employee assistance programs to local employers. These programs are designed to facilitate early identification and intervention of substance abuse and mental illness, although no systematic outcome assessments have been conducted at this time. Process assessment indicates that Communicare has become a primary community resource for information/education on substance abuse and is widely recognized as a high quality substance abuse treatment resource.
Providing Comprehensive Community Mental Health Care to The People of North Mississippi
