Services
We offer an ever expanding range of services to help members of our community, ages 4- 104.
Stress Management
If you’re living with high levels of stress, you’re putting your entire well-being at risk. Stress can wreak havoc on your emotional equilibrium, as well as your physical health. It narrows your ability to think clearly, function effectively, and enjoy life.
Mental health professionals often help people reduce and manage their stress. They can also help people work through other mental health issues that have developed while coping with high levels of stress over a period of time.
Depression
Talk therapy (also known as psychotherapy) can be an important part of treatment for depression or bipolar disorder. It can help you cope with feelings, problem solve and change behavior patterns that may contribute to your symptoms.
Talk therapy is not just “talking about your problems”; it is also working toward solutions. Some therapy may involve homework, such as tracking your moods, writing about your thoughts, or participating in social activities that have caused anxiety in the past. You might be encouraged to look at things in a different way or learn new ways to react to events or people.
Anxiety
Everyone feels anxious and under stress from time to time. Situations such job interviews, deadlines or driving in heavy traffic, often bring about anxious feelings. This mild anxiety might help you focus on the needed task. On the other hand, anxiety disorders cause severe distress over a period of time and disrupt the lives of individuals suffering from them. The frequency and intensity of anxiety involved in these disorders is often debilitating. Fortunately, with proper and effective treatment, people suffering from anxiety disorders can lead normal lives.
Substance Use
Therapists who specialize in addiction recovery can often help people who are addicted set achievable and empowering short-term goals as they work to overcome their addiction. Once sobriety is achieved, adaptive skills can be developed as the person works to regain physical and emotional health, and the therapist can begin to explore the source or cause of the addiction with the person in treatment as the person begins to employ the new coping strategies. Together, the therapist and the person being treated can work to set long-term goals that may include rebuilding damaged relationships, accepting responsibility for actions, and releasing guilt.
Therapy can also help identify and treat problem drug and alcohol use before it causes significant problems in an individuals life.
Employee Assistance Programs
We are an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) provider for McLaughlin Young, who manages several large employers throughout the state, including the state of North Carolina. This is a voluntary work-based program that offers free and confidential assessments, short-term counseling, referrals, and follow-up services to employees and family members who have personal and/or work-related problems.
EAP is fully confidential and free to you and your household members.
NC State employees Employees can make a self-referral to the EAP directly by calling (888) 298-3907 or (704) 717-5295 or via their website – https://www.mygroup.com.
Enter “My Portal Login,” Employee, username: ncdit, password: guest.
First Responders
Law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMT’s,v telecommunicators, corrections officers, and other first responders put themselves on the front lines of responding to crises and emergencies every day. Stress and trauma are often a routine part of the job. Unfortunately, repeated exposure to highly stressful and traumatic situations is known to impact mental health and well being in many ways.
The rate of attempted suicide among First Responders is steadily increasing to more than 10 times the national average. It is our mission at Moving Ahead Counseling to help combat this increase in the tri-county area and assist our community heroes with not only treating any current symptoms, but with learning healthy ways to handle stress and trauma so that they become more resilient to future trauma exposure.
Trauma and EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an integrative psychotherapy approach that has been extensively researched and proven effective for the treatment of trauma. EMDR is a set of standardized protocols that incorporates elements from many different treatment approaches.
EMDR is a unique, nontraditional form of psychotherapy designed to diminish negative feelings associated with memories of traumatic events. Unlike most forms of talk therapy, EMDR focuses less on the traumatic event itself and more on the disturbing emotions and symptoms that result from the event.
To date, EMDR therapy has helped millions of people of all ages relieve many types of psychological stress. It is especially appealing to some due to the fact that participation does not require you to talk extensively about the trauma in order for the treatment to be effective.
Medication Management
Best practice treatment for most mental health conditions is therapy OR a combination of medication management and therapy. Our prescribers offer medication management to patients who are 5 years old and older and have a wealth of knowledge and experience in mental health medications, how they react with one another and with other medications, and how dosages should be best managed.
Please note that we do require individuals being seen for medication management at MACS to be seen by one of our clinicians for therapy as recommended based on their treatment plan. Individuals wishing to be seen for medication management will need to first be scheduled for a comprehensive clinical evaluation with one of our talented clinicians.
Tailored Care Management
As a care management recipient , individuals have a single designated care manager supported by a multidisciplinary care team who will provide whole-person care management that addresses all of their needs, spanning physical health, behavioral health, substance use, pharmacy, and unmet health-related resource needs. Examples of this include linkage to physical health and MH/SA providers, followup support post hospital or ED visit, linkage to community resources, reviewing medications and ensuring access to needed medications, etc) .
We offer Care Management to residents of Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus and New Hanover Counties for individuals covered by Trillium Health Resources.