WHAT IS COLLABORATIVE HEALTH CARE?
A multi-disciplinary approach to health care utilizing psychological and educational strategies to support and enhance your health care goals, in collaboration with your physician and health care team.
A whole-person interdisciplinary approach is important because:
- Emotional stress can cause, exacerbate, and/or prevent recovery from physical illness.
- Educational and behavioral support can decrease recovery time and related expenses.
- The combination of physical and emotional health contributes to greater peace of mind, increased focus and vitality, increased productivity, decreased mistakes and accidents, and increased satisfaction with life and work.
BUSINESSES BENEFIT
Employers also benefit when their employees are healthier, happier, and more focused. These benefits include increased employee productivity and retention, as well as lower health care expenses, reduced absenteeism, and decreased workplace mistakes.
SOME HEALTH CARE ISSUES SUPPORTED:
- Stress-related illnesses
- Heart disease
- Immune disorders
- Fibromyalgia
- Migraines
- Hypertension
- Cancer
- Chronic pain
- Infertility
- Irritable bowel syndrome
- Memory difficulties
- Insomnia
- Obesity
- Chronic skin disorders
WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?
Twenty years of research stress the importance of happy marriages in influencing our health. Couples who report satisfaction in their marriage, also enjoy better overall health, less stress, and they live longer. The emotional impact of negative relationships takes a toll on the health of family members. The health effects on women are even more dramatic than for men in stressful relationships.
YOUR CHEATIN' HEART:
The correlation between negative emotions and heart disease is especially dramatic. Heart patients who reported negative reactions to their spouses, were more likely to die within 4 years than those with more satisfying marriages.
Heart patients who learn stress management techniques are less likely to suffer a future heart attack, or to require future surgery than those who receive exercise training or standard cardiac rehabilitation programs.
Other studies have linked stress-related extreme peaks in blood pressure with damage to the carotid arteries that provide circulation to the brain.
RESEARCH INDICATES THAT UP TO 75% OF ILLNESS IS EITHER ACCOMPANIED BY, OR INDUCED BY EMOTIONAL AND/OR BEHAVIORAL FACTORS.
SERVICES AVAILABLE:
- Psychotherapy
- Marriage therapy
- NICU families
- Behavioral strategies
- Health care education and lifestyle strategies for well being
- Mediation
- Group education and support
- Community and professional education through INFOCUS
OTHER RELATED HEALTH CARE FACTS:
- Childhood sexual trauma has been linked to a failure to recover from surgery in adulthood.
- In studies correlating stress to the common cold, a number of psychological and social issues were identified. Some of these factors were number of intimate social roles, stressful life changes, and stressful relationships.
- Medicine now widely acknowledges that the physical, emotional, and social elements of health care are interdependent. Health care must attend to the whole person in order to be effective.
- New studies indicate that certain patterns of prenatal stress predict preterm delivery.