Our psychiatrists and mental health professionals at Psycamore are constantly striving to find the most effective ways to stabilize, manage, and treat mental health conditions for our valued patients. It is our goal to assist every patient in being their healthiest self after a diagnosis or after experiencing a psychiatric event. As such, medical monitoring plays an essential role here at Psycamore. It allows our psychiatrists and therapists to consistently evaluate the efficacy of our patient’s medications and/or therapies, while also providing us with valuable insight into how various treatments work for each individual. The overall goal of psychiatric medical monitoring is to provide relief for symptoms, assess and guide treatment, assure safety, bring about stability, and assist with a healthy return to life.
What is Medical Monitoring?
Medical monitoring encompasses both the medication management and therapeutic monitoring components of treating an emotional or mental condition. It includes the process of regularly checking and recording meaningful progress and other information about a patient’s health and treatment. Medication management includes evaluating the effectiveness of medications prescribed by the psychiatrist, while therapy goal monitoring encompasses the efficacy of both individual sessions with a therapist as well as group and family therapy sessions.
Progress monitoring of behavioral health patients is conducted at regular intervals and can include physical exams, blood and urine tests, medication reviews, mental health assessments (such as self-reported questionnaires, interviews, or cognitive tests), and more.
Please note that Psycamore offers this service as part of an Intensive Outpatient Therapy program. It is not a stand alone service. You will receive this therapy as part of your program should your therapist deem it necessary.
How Does Medical Monitoring Work?
At Psycamore, all patients’ mental and emotional states are evaluated and monitored by a psychiatric physician at the time of admission and on a regular weekly basis. This monitoring helps not only in providing a good understanding of the origins of the illness but also in arriving at a more definitive diagnosis. The main goal of mental health assessment monitoring is to assess the response of the symptoms to the therapies, particularly medication therapy, and to aid in adjusting and fine-tuning the therapies.
A key component of the monitoring is the assessment of a patient’s safety in terms of dangerous thoughts to self or others and in terms of side effects or adverse responses to medications. Each person is unique, as is their reaction to medication and how effective a particular medication may be. As such, the monitoring may involve laboratory tests to assess medication levels in the blood and the effect of medications on body systems. It may also involve screening for abusable substances in urine or blood.
What are the Benefits of Medical Monitoring?
One of the main benefits of progress monitoring for mental health patients is that it allows our mental health professionals to make sure that each of our patients is on track for recovery and management. By evaluating progress over time, our psychiatrists can adjust medications or therapies as necessary in order to ensure that patients are receiving enough support and guidance throughout the treatment journey. Additionally, medical monitoring also helps identify potential issues that may arise from taking certain medications or participating in certain therapies so that these can be avoided in the future. Finally, medical monitoring provides an opportunity for therapists and psychiatrists to assess a patient’s condition in order to determine if treatment is effective, if the diagnosis is accurate, and to guide ongoing treatment. Incorporating medical monitoring into our treatment plans is an important component of ensuring the ongoing health and safety of each and every one of our behavioral health patients.
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