We adhere to high ethical standards, protecting clients at every level.
PROFESSIONAL
Our therapies and services are all client-centered; your well-being is our top priority.
CARING
All of our counselors are licensed in their respective fields and our programs are accredited by JCAHO.
RESPONSIBLE
Life is full of choices.
We help individuals make Positive Choices!
Positive Choices Counseling Services is committed to providing quality mental health services to all and maintaining a positive relationship within our community.
The beautiful thing about counseling is that it is a highly personal experience that is guided by you! People seek counseling for a variety of reasons:help responding to unexpected changes, help managing a life or work crisis or guidance in navigating a particularly tough challenge. Counseling provides objective, confidential listening and guidance in a comfortable setting at a pace guided by you. Contact one of our Mental Health professionals to get started on your journey today!
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The state has an electronic database which collects designated data on substances dispensed in the state. The data are distributed from the database to individuals who are authorized under state law to receive the information for purposes of their profession. This information is useful in supporting access to legitimate use of controlled substances, identifying and deterring or preventing drug abuse and diversion, and facilitating and encouraging the identification, intervention with and treatment of persons addicted to prescription drugs.
Prescription Fulfillment
A health care program implemented by a physician or other qualified health care practitioner in the form of instructions that govern the plan of care for an individual patient. It is important to note that we prescribe medicines. We do not dispense them.
Mental Status/Psychiatric Assessment
A structured way of describing a patient’s current state of mind under the domains of appearance, attitude, behavior, speech, mood and affect, thought process, thought content, perception, cognition, insight, and judgement. The purpose is to obtain a comprehensive cross-sectional description of the patient’s mental state. Data are collected through a combination of direct and indirect means such as;
unstructured observation while obtaining biographical and social information
focused questions about current symptoms
formalized psychological tests
Cultural differences between the examiner and patient must be taken into consideration, as different cultural backgrounds may be associated with different norms of interpersonal behavior and emotional expression.
Independent Living Skills
These services ranging from time management, socialization skills, community services, grooming, home management, clothing maintenance, money management, health and safety, and transportation are offered to children and adolescents under the Healthy Louisiana initiative.
Examples of some of the skills we teach include:
● Time Management
Understanding concept of time
Using a clock to plan activities
Using a calendar appropriately
● Socialization Skills
Understanding of social etiquette
Utilizing appropriate manners
Learning how to get along with others
● Grooming
Maintaining good grooming habits
Toileting
Using cosmetics and cologne appropriately
● Community Services
Shopping behaviors
Using public services
Attending entertainment venues
Psychosocial Rehabilitation Skills (PSR)
Psychosocial Rehabilitation Services are intended to provide:
● Restoration, rehabilitation, and support to develop social and interpersonal skills to increase community tenure, enhance personal relationships, establish support networks, increase community awareness, develop coping strategies and effective functioning in the individual’s social environment (home, work, and school).
Crisis Assessment
Crisis services include 24 hour, seven days a week (24/7) toll free telephone line answered by a trained crisis specialist with face to face crisis service capabilities including, but not limited to: triage, intervention, evaluation, referral for additional services/treatment and follow up services. In a crisis we assess for risk of harm of suicide, homicide, injury to self or others. During a crisis intervention process, these are the seven stages of working through a crisis:
● assessing lethality and safety needs;
● establishing rapport and communication;
● identifying the major problems;
● dealing with feelings and providing support;
● exploring possible alternatives;
● formulating an action plan; and
● follow up measures.
Assessment of danger to self or others should continue throughout any crisis assessment, crisis intervention, and crisis stabilization process.
Behavioral Assessment
Behavioral assessment is an approach that focuses on the interactions between situations and behaviors for the purpose of effecting behavioral change. There are several tools available to use in behavioral assessment allowing for a deeper understanding of why a behavior is occurring. A primary method used during the behavioral assessment is interviewing. More specifically, it is how we identify a problem behavior, the situational factors that maintain the behavior, and the consequences that result from the behavior. During the interview we attempt to obtain a general picture of the presenting problem and of the variables that seem to be maintaining the problematic behavior.
Observation is also a technique of the behavioral assessment. It is often used to gain a better understanding of the frequency, strength, and pervasiveness of the problem behavior as well as the factors that are maintaining it. It provides the clinician with an actual sample (rather than a self-report) of the problematic behavior. The behavioral assessment is an ongoing process, occurring at all points throughout the treatment.
Psychosocial Assessment
Assessment is an ongoing process throughout the counseling relationship, requiring the client’s full participation. The purpose of continuous assessment is to understand the client in relationship to how they function within their environment; and helps to create a plan of care so that the individual can maintain, improve or promote self-change, environmental changes or both. The assessment is repeated either quarterly or yearly to ensure that it is up to date and to measure the progress of the client.
Group Counseling
Benefits of Group Counseling:
● Discover that you’re not alone in how you feel
● Learn from others who have similar problems
● Gain multiple perspectives on your concerns from different group members
● Feel more connected to others as group cohesion develops
● Become more aware of yourself through genuine feedback from others
● Pick up new interpersonal skills that you can use in your daily life
● Internalize the lessons you’ve learned by helping others in the group
At Positive Choices, we offer a variety of Support and Skill Building Groups and are offered as follows: Coping with Depression, Coping with Anxiety, Build your Self-Confidence, Building a Stronger You, Trauma Support Group, and other groups designed toward children and adolescents.
Court Mandated
Court-ordered therapy is meant to be a catalyst for change, for an individual or family who, is at any time, involved in the legal system and subsequently ordered by a judge or magistrate to participate in therapy with a mental health provider. Throughout the 7th Judicial District Court in Concordia Parish, court-ordered therapy is used to persuade litigants to get the help they need, when they are unable or unwilling to seek it out on their own.
If a judge has ordered that you or a loved one must participate in individual therapy sessions, special consideration should be made to seek out a therapist with these qualities:
● The court-ordered therapy should always be provided by a clinician with forensic experience, who is clear about the way that patient-therapist confidentiality, or “privileged” communication will likely be waived.
● During the very first meeting, the therapist/counselor should explain to the patient that he or she could be instructed by the Court to openly communicate the information disclosed within the therapy sessions.
● He or she should also explore how the fact that therapy was court ordered could impact the patient’s motivation, openness to disclose information, and attempts to present in a positive light.
● The therapist will also need to have a firm grip on basic information pertaining to the court system, Louisiana’s statutes, and comfort with testimony and cross examination. This is an important factor in choosing the right clinician, as it is likely that the clinician may be subpoenaed in court to testify as a fact witness.
Couples Therapy
Although it may seem too difficult, it is possible to repair your relationship after an affair. You can rebuild trust and a new level of intimacy, maybe even more than you had before. Individuals and couples can learn a lot about themselves and their relationships from affairs, and we hope to help you use this time for healing and growth in order move forward, in or beyond your current relationship. How Couples Counseling at Positive Choices can help:
● Break Free from Negative Patterns: Couples often get caught in negative patterns that keep repeating, leading to perpetual conflict and distance. Couples feel as if they are reliving the same arguments, or feel so distant they’re like roommates. This is when couples say they feel stuck, every time they try to work on the relationship, they feel as if they keep jumping on the same merry-go-round that just keeps going around and around, getting nowhere.
● Go Beyond Communication Skills: Couples will not just learn “I statements” or how to “fight fair.” They will experience a very different kind of communication, speaking from the heart. We will help you find that you already have the skills to communicate with your partner when you feel supported and safe enough to express yourself.
● Increase Trust & Security in Your Relationship: When you learn how to break your patterns, and connect on a deeper level, you will feel closer to your partner, and will experience increased trust and security. This is what will give you a more lasting change in your relationship, so you can see a long future together again.
● Improve your Sexual Intimacy: Couples counseling is not just about emotional intimacy, but also about sexual intimacy. The benefit is, the more secure your relationship becomes, the more you’ll be able to improve and revive your sexual relationship as well.
Community Psychiatric Support Treatment
The following are some components of Community Psychiatric Support Treatment:
● Assist our clients/members and their family members to identify strategies or treatment options associated with their mental illness to overcome the affects it may have on the individual’s daily living, financial management, housing, academic and/or employment progress, personal recovery or resilience, family and/or interpersonal relationships and community integration.
● Individual supportive counseling, solution-focused interventions, emotional and behavioral management and problem behavior analysis with the individual, with the goal of assisting the individual with developing and implementing social, interpersonal, self- care, daily living and independent living skills to restore stability, to support functional gains and to adapt to community living.
● Facilitate and coordinate strengths-based planning and treatments to identify strengths and needs, resources, natural supports and develop goals and objectives to utilize personal strengths, resources and natural supports.
● Assist our clients with effectively responding to or avoiding identified precursors or triggers that would adversely affect them and identify help clients and their family to recognize and effectively respond to a potential psychiatric or personal crisis.
● Restoration, rehabilitation and support to develop skills to locate, rent and keep a home, landlord/tenant negotiations, selecting a roommate and renter’s rights and responsibilities.
● Assisting the individual to develop daily living skills specific to managing their own home, including managing their money, medications and using community resources and other self-care requirements.
Individual Counseling
Counseling is a process that can help people identify more effective strategies both to cope with difficult situations and to achieve their goals. While some people who seek counseling have chronic emotional difficulties, most are dealing with normal life events and are simply in need of an objective listener – someone who doesn’t judge and who can help them see new alternatives. Individual counseling is a collaborative effort between you and your counselor. Our goal is to provide an open, supportive, and confidential environment for you to address the issues that are concerning you.
Crisis Intervention
Individuals are more open to receiving help during crises. A person may have experienced the crisis within the last 24 hours or within a few weeks before seeking help. Crisis intervention is conducted in a supportive manner. The length of time for crisis intervention may range from one session to several weeks, with the average being four weeks. Session length may range from 20 minutes to two or more hours. Crisis intervention is appropriate for children, adolescents, and younger and older adults. It can take place in a range of settings, such as schools, homes, hospital emergency rooms, or other places of service where the individual in crisis is located. Positive Choices is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Anger Management
Anger management is a procedure of acquiring the skills to recognize signs that you are becoming angry, and taking action to deal with the situation in a positive way. In no way does anger management mean holding the anger in or trying to keep from feeling anger. Anger is a normal human emotion, a healthy one when it is expressed appropriately. Anger management teaches you to recognize frustrations early on and settle them in a way that allows you to express your needs, while remaining calm and in control. Anger management helps you identify what triggers your emotions, and how to respond so that things work in your favor, instead of against you.
