To help address Eastern Washington’s continuing need for behavioral health care, Providence Health Care has opened RISE, an outpatient behavioral health program for adults and adolescents. As a day program, RISE — which stands for Resources, Insight, Support and Empowerment — allows patients to return home at the end of the day to continue building family and community relationships.
Located on the Providence Holy Family Hospital Campus, RISE will care for patients with services such as counseling, training, yoga and meditation, reducing the need for hospitalization and helping patients thrive in the community. The program also serves those who have recently been discharged from inpatient hospital care.
“There is a lack of mental health programs in Eastern Washington to help those who need a higher level of care than provided in a traditional outpatient setting, but who do not require inpatient psychiatric hospitalization,” says Tamara Sheehan, regional director of Providence Behavioral Health Services. “Because of a lack of access to this level of care, individuals often seek care in emergency departments. Providence developed RISE to provide much-needed access to care and to help fill the gap between traditional outpatient care and hospitalization.”
The program opened in September to adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17, and it began accepting those 18 and older on October 15. RISE comes at a time when the need for mental health services is great in Eastern Washington, as 32.8 percent of adolescents in Spokane County reported being depressed in 2016, according to Spokane Regional Health District. The suicide rate also increased significantly in Spokane County between 2011 and 2015, topping the suicide rate of both Washington State and the United States.
Providence is adding additional behavioral health resources in the Spokane community, as Providence Health Care has partnered with Universal Health Services/Fairfax Behavioral Health to open a 100-bed psychiatric hospital in Spokane that will increase capacity to care for adolescents and adults in the region. Increasing access to behavioral health care is also one of WSHA’s top legislative priorities for the 2019 state legislative session.
Read more about RISE in an article in The Spokesman-Review. (Tim Pfarr)
