- Alternative Sentencing
Alternative Sentencing is an extensively coordinated psycholegal and clinical service that assists the patient and their families when an individual with a serious mental disorder has committed a crime or develops other legal problems as a result of their illness. Alternative sentencing involves a multiphase approach in which TAPA Clinical Associates with the patient, his or her criminal defense attorneys and family to help the patient in addressing his or her legal problems from a framework of psychological care and treatment for the underlying illness that contributed to the patient’s legal difficulties. In order to be a candidate for alternative sentencing, the patient must have a psychiatric disorders centrally related to the criminal behavior in question and be willing to agree to extended treatment rather than incarceration as psychological assessment and treatment frequently play a central role in assigning and completion of various types of alternative sentences.
- Anxiety Disorder-Specific Treatment
Stress is an everyday fact of life. You can’t avoid it. Stress is any change that you need to adapt to – it can be a negative or positive change. Day-to-day living we all encounter stress – both good and bad stress. Not all stress is bad. When it is the right amount stress can help motivate, yet on the other hand, when the stress is too much it can be harmful and create overwhelming anxiety.
The Key to Stress Management is BALANCE! There are four main sources of anxiety and stress:
1. ENVIRONMENT:
Anything around you can be a source of stress. This can include weather, pollens, noise, living conditions, and pollution. Think of your specific environment – What are some of your environmental stressors?
2. SOCIAL STRESSORS:
You must also cope with what happens in daily life. This can include financial problems, job problems, new living arrangements, loss of loved ones, incarceration, heavily scheduled routine. – What are some of your social stressors?
3. PHYSIOLOGICAL STRESS:
Our bodies can also be a source of stress. Just simply aging can place stress on our system. For example, aches and pains, menopause in women, illness, injuries, lack of exercise, poor nutrition, and poor sleep. – What are your physiological stressors?
4. YOUR THOUGHTS:
How you think about your environment, your situation and the people around you can affect your stress level. The idea of dysfunctional thoughts. – What difficult thoughts do you deal with?
Treatment for anxiety and stress includes understanding the environmental stressors that are in one’s life. In addition, relaxation techniques can be utilized to lower one’s anxiety and in turn lower the body’s physiological reaction to stress and anxiety. Examining one’s thoughts is also crucial in reducing anxiety. Often times individual’s experience catastrophic thinking that inevitably increases one’s level of anxiety. By realistically exploring distorted thinking one can not only lower, but manage day to day anxiety to create an overall sense of well-being.
- Bipolar Disorder-Specific Treatment
- Child & Adolescent
- Conservatorships
In situations when an adult is unable to manage their financial affairs and/or provide for their own self care (i.e. due to a severe psychiatric illness, Alzheimer’s disease, other serious illnesses), the court is often called upon to appoint a conservator. In such instances, psychological treatment and assessment is often critical at several junctures throughout this process, such as: assessment for the psychiatric appropriateness of a conservatorship, assisting in the determination of the appropriate conservator, and assisting those involved in the process to address and effectively manage their new life circumstances.
- Depression-Specific Treatment
- Developmental Disorders
Developmental Disorders refer to a broad class of disorders that are typically diagnosed within childhood and result in slowed development in one or more areas, including areas such as language, motor functioning, neuropsychological functioning, and intellect. Those effecting only one area of development (Specific Developmental Disorders) typically respond well to early intervention and are often overcome. However, for Pervasive Developmental Disorders in which multiple areas of development are impacted (i.e. autism spectrum disorders), more intensive intervention and management is often necessary. It is critical to appropriately assess and diagnose these disorders and to facilitate more intensive treatment and case management.
- Family & Couples
- Forensic, Criminal & Civil
Psychological assessment often plays a significant role in both criminal and civil court proceedings. On the criminal side, forensic psychologists are often called upon in order to assist in the determination of mental/psychological and neuropsychological conditions that are foundational to relevant psycholegal issues including psychopathy/antisocial personality disorder, malingering/exaggeration, competency, insanity/criminal responsibility, emotional disability, mental health mitigating factors, appropriateness/amenability to rehabilitation/treatment and violence risk threat assessments. Attorneys and judges often rely upon psychological evaluations to assist in the legal decision making process. In civil court proceedings, psychological assessment is oftentimes utilized to assist in determining the extent of personal injury, emotional damages, discrimination, and fitness for duty. TAPA psychologists can serve as expert witnesses, working with the client’s legal team.
- Health Psychology
- Schizophrenia-Specific Treatment
- Somatoform Disorder-Specific Treatment
- Special Problems with Professionals
- Trauma and Recovery
When trauma occurs (e.g., physical, emotional and/or sexual) the child’s own internal experience and emotions are not validated. In the optimal family, public validation of private experience is given frequently, which leads to emotional regulation and the development of a healthy sense of self. In contrast, the invalidating environment contributes to emotional dysregulation by failing to teach the child to label and modulate arousal, to tolerate distress, or to trust his/her own emotional responses as valid interpretation of events.
When stress and traumatic reactions remain untreated an individual can go on to acquire longer term illnesses, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and/or chronic pain. In addition, the individual’s ability to pursue meaningful work and to develop and sustain safe and loving relationships is further impaired. A variety of scientifically-validated treatment approaches are uniquely tailored to the individual in order to relieve the trauma symptoms and restore the individual to emotional and physical health. DBT, is an effective form of therapy that empowers an individual to learn to regulate their emotions, handle distressing situations, and to be more effective in their relationships. For many individuals who have been exposed to trauma these skills have been difficult to develop and maintain. It is our goal at The Arroyos to assist individuals in gaining these skills in order to feel empowered and improve their overall quality of life. When an individual is able to tolerate rapid reprocessing of memories, EMDR is an effective form of treatment that can be utilized to reduce symptoms.
Individual psychotherapy is also utilized whereby the individual is guided to create a coherent narrative in order to make sense of the trauma that they have experienced. Often times the individual blames themselves for the abuse which leads to self-harming behaviors, including cutting and suicidal attempts. Healing is achieved as overwhelming events are validated and shown compassion In addition, as the individual learns to differentiate the “here-and-now” from the “past events” further healing and integration of recovery occurs.
