Skyline Madison Campus to Launch "Treatment Mall"

March 17, 2009 - Skyline Madison Campus provides a wide range of psychiatric services within a continuum of care, including inpatient, outpatient, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient settings.  It is now adding a Treatment Mall to improve quality programming beginning May 4th –the beginning of National Mental Health Awareness Month. 

“The Treatment Mall concept allows individuals to participate in a normalizing approach to treatment; helping set goals for recovery while more closely imitating life in the community”, says Skyline Madison Chief Operating Officer Kay Delage.  She says staff and patients from multiple patient care units come together to provide and receive mental health services. Similar in concept to a college curriculum, patients leave their units in the morning to go to the Mall.  They participate in selecting an individualized daily group schedule from a variety of skill-based classes to meet their specific treatment objectives. The classes are designed to provide group therapy, recreation therapy, social skills, and to provide education related to memory re-training, medications, anger management, communication, relationships, disease management, and addiction recovery. Patients will be guided to overcome discharge barriers, be connected to community resources and return to independent living, whenever possible.

The Treatment Mall will consist of 12 group rooms as well as Independence Square. Independence Square recreates the feeling of a typical Tennessee town, with full-scale replicas of a bank, market, automobile gas station, café, dentist office, mechanics’ garage, putting green, boat dock and a fully furnished apartment.

 “The Treatment Mall concept emphasizes the central role the patient plays in his recovery through individualized, evidence-based interventions, self-determination and choice, and development of a healthy lifestyle,” according to Delage.   “This unique approach to patient care fully engages the patient as a partner in care.”

Mental Illness:  The Facts

• One in four adults have a mental illness or substance abuse disorder
• One in 17 has a serious lifetime disorder such as schizophrenia, depression or bipolar disorder
• People with severe and persistent mental illness die 25 years younger
• Mental illness is the second leading cause of disability
• One-third of homeless individuals have a severe and persistent mental illness.