LifeMAX® Outpatient Mental Healthcare

To apply behavioral science to outpatient healthcare presents challenges not encountered with inpatient healthcare. The hospital setting provides a unique context in which the patient resides among a trained, professional staff on duty at all times. At any given moment, that staff can assess the patient’s status, apply specific therapies, and measure clinical course. The clinician or an associate generally has contact with the patient on a daily basis. Both clinician and patient reap the benefits of this unique context. The clinician does so because the context augments mightily the power to provide the highest quality of medical care in a continuous, systematic, and consistent fashion. The patient does so because the context responds to the patient’s efforts at self-help in a supportive and constructive manner.

In contrast to inpatient healthcare, outpatient healthcare demands that the clinician operate in a context in which the patient resides among people most of whom are unknown to the clinician and in which there is no one other than the patient, the family, and perhaps friends to assess the patient’s status, apply specific therapies, and measure clinical course. On occasion, some of these people do not have the patient’s best interests either in mind or at heart. Furthermore, the clinician has contact with the patient only relatively infrequently, usually once per week, at most. Thus, both clinician and patient are placed at a disadvantage compared to the inpatient context.

Heretofore, the disadvantages of the outpatient context have limited severely opportunities to apply behavioral science to outpatient healthcare. The advent of the Computer Age, however, has tilted the balance more favorably toward behavioral science. LifeMAX® has taken advantage of the advances in computer technology to design and develop a computer-assisted, biobehavioral program for the treatment of Anxiety and Fear Disorders. The Program incorporates many of the specific techniques LifeMAX® developed for the inpatient context, documented techniques that have benefitted tens of thousands of patients. This outpatient program now is available to licensed clinicians for use in their own offices. In addition, LifeMAX® Clinical Services offers consultation, design, and development for all classes of outpatient.mental healthcare. These services reflect the depth and breadth of experience that LifeMAX® has acquired over the years, experienced documented in the professional literature.

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