Empowering MHSA Professionals with Mental Health Billing Software

The importance of mental health is recognized, and it is considered an important pillar of overall well-being. For that reason, the world celebrates Mental Health Awareness Month in May every year. The awareness month was started in 1949 by the organization Mental Health America.  Since then, it has grown into an essential annual observance globally.

This month gives room for people to talk about mental illness, wellness, stigma, and mental health support. At the same time, it also provides an opportunity for therapists and mental health practitioners to step up and be advocates, educators, and changemakers in the field of mental well-being.

Importance of Mental Health Awareness Month

Despite society being actively working to improve mental well-being, many individuals still face barriers in communicating their mental health problems. Mental Health Awareness Month brings the spotlight on the topic and gives a way to communicate, exchange knowledge, and understand various mental illness issues. It serves several key purposes:

• Reducing Stigma: Though millions of people are affected by mental illness, it continues to carry a stigma. Almost sixteen percent of youth in the United States experience mental illness. However, only half of them receive treatment.
• Encouraging Early Intervention: The awareness month increases awareness and helps the public understand early signs of mental health issues, promoting early intervention and preventing escalation.
• Legal and System Improvements: The month provides a platform for therapists to highlight issues and suggest improvements in policies related to insurance, access to treatment, and mental health funding.
• Reduce disparity: Mental Health Awareness Month gives everyone an opportunity to understand the experience of marginalized and excluded communities, which allows to expand the conversation around mental health issues.

Understanding the History and Evolution of Mental Health Awareness Month

As mentioned before, Mental Health America, the national association for mental health, started the awareness month 76 years ago.

In the initial years, the awareness month primarily aimed to educate people regarding mental illness and early detection and prevention. Later, it expanded to more people, covering various communities and a larger aim to provide everyone with access to treatment.

The 1960s and 70s was an important period, where focus was given to understanding psychiatric conditions, the deinstitutionalization movement, and the importance of community-based care. The 1990s saw a shift toward integrating mental health into broader public health efforts.

Previously, the campaigns were promoted by printed media, various social groups, and healthcare institutions. By the start of the 21st century, digital campaigns took the driving seat, leading to an expanded reach of mental health awareness.

How Can Therapists Contribute During Mental Health Awareness Month?

Whenever an individual faces mental health challenges, the therapist should be the first point of contact. However, people are often reluctant to open the therapy room door. Mental Health Awareness Month is a time for therapists to bridge this gap, spread awareness, and encourage individuals to improve their mental health. They can share insights and opinions during public speaking events, run campaigns, and engage with communities on a personal level.

Therapists must not confine their roles to diagnosis and treatment; they should also be the educators and advocates who can normalize day-to-day mental health conversations.

• Community Engagement: It’s for sure that community-based outreach is one of the most efficient ways therapists can make a difference. Under this, therapists can host workshops, Q&A sessions, provide discounted telehealth service, and host webinars on mental health-related topics. To organize such events, they can partner with schools, community centers, and various organizations.
• Public Education: Therapists own credibility in the field of mental health. They can educate the public through various means such as blogs, social media, and booklets. They can be speakers for improvements in mental health policies and bring critical change. Many organizations, such as NAMI and Mental Health America, offer advocacy toolkits that therapists can use to get started.
• Practice Level Initiative: The awareness month gives you the option to engage with existing clients and prospects on a different level by offering them resource kits, mental health books, and self-help material. You can also keep a weekly theme for your patients, group therapy activities, and much more.

Improve Client Care Through DENmaar’s Innovative Solutions

DENmaar aims to reduce the administrative burden of therapists and provide them with operational efficiency. With DENmaar, you can automate tasks such as scheduling and staff duties.

It also helps you to track the client’s progress and tailor the treatment accordingly. With DENmaar’s features, you can improve the value provided to clients, delivering greater benefits and strengthening your relationship with them.

Get in touch with us and book a demo to learn more about us.

Final Words

Mental Health Awareness Month isn’t only a public campaign. It provides a stage for therapists to improve the mental well-being of people by educating and encouraging them to take therapy sessions.

Rather than providing just symbolic support, you can be an active lead and speaker. Take the benefit and show the world that mental health is as important as physical health, requiring the same visibility and attention. Be the part, educate the public, and let their mental health journey start with you.

As you are here, you must be starting your mental health practice or working to improve it, and writing behavioral health notes is an important aspect of that.

Therapists, counselors, and mental health practitioners must take these notes when they entertain a patient. These notes help practitioners in providing better service, stay compliant, and develop the required connection with patients.

If you don’t write these notes, you can only work with clients if you are a mnemonist. Otherwise, every time you see the client, you’ll need a recap and shake off your mind to get the details out and progress further.

Before going into much detail, let’s first understand its definition.

What’s Behavioral Health Notes?

Behavioral health notes are clinical records that practitioners document while providing patients with treatment. It contains the patient’s mental, emotional, and behavioral health status, treatment progress, and interventions.

These notes help healthcare providers track patient well-being, assess treatment’s effectiveness, and ensure high-quality care.

According to a study conducted by Psychiatric Services, 49% of patients felt in control of their healthcare due to behavioral health notes. The study also concluded that the notes helped 45% of participants build better trust in their practitioners.

This shows that these notes are exceptionally beneficial. Now, let’s have a deeper look at its importance.

Importance of Behavioral Health Notes

There are several benefits that you can get from documenting behavioral health notes. Some of them are stated here:

• Provide Better Care and Treatment: Mental health progress notes allow you to continuously track a client’s treatment without remembering all the details of every session, which is impossible. Your notes allow you to identify patterns in a client’s thoughts and feelings, which allows you to personalize the treatment and move it in the right direction. Overall, these notes will act as your guiding light in providing effective care.
• Remembering Patient Details: During a session, patients can mention multiple details that they have mentioned before but don’t remember and can’t relate to or understand the situation. Rather than wasting time asking the client to repeat the information, you can find the information from the therapy notes and get an instant understanding.
• Avoid Troubles in Reimbursement: therapy health notes act as proof of the service provided to the patient. Many insurance companies mandate submitting these notes to get reimbursement. And, even if they don’t, it’s always better to be on the safe side and ready to provide the details. You can read the complete guide to Insurance Credentialing to know more about this aspect.
• Unified Healthcare Service: When you take the therapy progress notes and store them in electronic health record (EHR) system, they can be easily shared with the other healthcare professionals whom your patient visits. It help them to check the mental health history, current treatment, and medication, and take an informed decision.
• Evidence in Lawsuits: If any of your patients files a complaint against you, therapy notes can be used as evidence stating the condition of your patient and the treatment you provided.

 

Types of Behavioral Health Notes

There are multiple types of behavioral health notes that practitioners need to document based on the stage of the treatment. These notes can be defined under five different types:

• Assessments: These notes are useful at the initial stage of the treatment when the therapist needs to learn about the clients, understand the medical condition, and form a treatment roadmap. The assessment can be done periodically as well to re-evaluate the condition and edit the roadmap accordingly.
• Psychotherapy Notes: Though these are optional behavioral therapy notes, it is important to document them for perform the treatment better. These notes contain sensitive information about the client’s behavior and must be kept private from the client to avoid their influence on the treatment.
• Progress Notes: These notes are the core notes, containing the details of the session, the client’s treatment, progress, etc. These should be stored in the EHR system and can be shared with relevant parties as and when needed. One must add the progress note during or immediately after the session to ensure the information is accurate and concise.
• Treatment Plan: Though the treatment information can be part of the assessment and progress notes, a dedicated document is recommended. It contains a roadmap starting from the current situation to the goal set during the initial assessment. It also contains general information about the client, the mental health history, and the timeline for the set goal.
• Discharge summary: After the treatment is completed and the goal is achieved, the clinician provides patients with a discharge summary containing the details of the treatment, the condition at the time of discharge, post-discharge instructions, and the follow-up plan.

Common Formats for Behavioral Health Notes

There are different formats for documenting behavioral health notes, such as SOAP, DAP, and BIRP. These formats are developed to record information in a logical and easy-to-comprehend manner. However, there’s no one “right” format to write the therapy notes. You can choose the one that fits your approach and client goals. If required, you can even mix different formats to create a suitable one.

For now, we will discuss the formats which are widely accepted and used.

SOAP Notes

SOAP is one of the widely used formats that’s adopted due to the flexibility it offers. It coves all the key areas of the treatment, making sure that even the minor details get accommodated.

• Subjective (S): It includes the clients’ own assessment of their feelings and behavior since the last visit or while taking the session.
• Objective (O): This includes the clinician’s objective assessment of a client’s behavior, appearance, or any other measurable data.
• Assessment (A): The therapist’s assessment must include the professional evaluation of the subjective and objective aspects to diagnose clients and severity of condition and how it has changed with sessions.
• Plan (P): As the name suggests, it includes the treatment plan as you move forward, the upcoming interventions, tasks, and thoughts to convey to the client.

DAP Notes

DAP format is somewhat similar to SOAP. It is much simplified as it combines subjective and objective aspects into one single category, “Data.”

• Data (D): It includes everything that has happened in a session, combining the subjective information conveyed by the client during the session and objective observations by the clinician.
• Assessment (A): It is similar to SOAP’s assessment. Under this aspect, the clinician conducts the assessment of the data category and concludes the client’s condition, changes in diagnosis, improvements, etc.
• Plan (P): The plan category is always the same in any format. It suggests the actions to be taken while moving forward in diagnosis.

BIRP Notes

BIRP format is a unique approach that allows documentation of much more detailed ones.

• Behavior (B): This is similar to the data stage, which includes the client’s subjective feelings and the therapist’s objective assessment, combined to define the client’s behavior.
• Intervention (I): This section documents the intervention or therapeutic action that the clinician takes during the session to improve the behavior of the client.
• Response (R): This category is used to document the patient’s response to the therapeutic treatment during the session. The response can be connected with the behavior of the next session to understand whether the intervention was helpful or requires certain changes before continuing.
• Plan (P): Plan is the same as it is SOAP and DAP formats. It helps you define the overall treatment plan by understanding the connection between behavior,  intervention, and response.

Best Practices in Behavioral Health Notes

Writing these health notes is an essential clinical skill. There are certain best practices a therapist must follow to ensure that the therapy progress notes are accurate, effective, and to the point.

• Document the notes while the therapy session is in progress or just after it ends while details are fresh in your memory, reducing the risk of missing essential information.
• Always stick to observable facts, and don’t let your personal opinion or assumption cause misjudgment.
• Follow a structured format such as SOAP (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan) or DAP (Data, Assessment, Plan) to ensure consistency and clarity in the documentation.
• Ensure compliance with HIPAA and other legal guidelines by keeping the client’s details safe and secure.
• Use neutral tone in the documentation, free from jargon, slang, or emotionally charged wording to ensure professionalism.
• Always document treatment objectives and measurable goals in the plan. After every session mark the progress towards them.
• Keep the notes prepared for legal scrutiny by keeping the documentation well-defined, accurate, and professional as if they could be reviewed in court.

Write Better and Faster Behavioral Health Notes With DENmaar

Using DENmaar can significantly enhance the efficiency, accuracy, and security of health notes. Our tool streamlines the documentation process by providing structured templates, and automation, and ensures compliance.

With DENMaar, you can choose various formats such as SOAP, DAP, and BIRP to ensure consistency in note-taking along with enough customization to fit individual client needs.

Besides that, DENmaar ensures that all records are encrypted, securely stored, and meet legal compliance requirements such as HIPAA.

You can also improve the service by features such as follow-ups and reminders and provide clients with maximum benefits.

Closing

It is essential to effectively document behavioral health notes to provide quality care, ensure continuity, and maintain legal and ethical compliance. By understanding the various therapy note types, and formats (such as SOAP and DAP), and following best practices such as objectivity, timeliness, and confidentiality, therapists can create clear and useful records.

Leveraging technology, such as using DENmaar software, can further enhance efficiency and accuracy in note-taking. Well-documented notes support better client outcomes and build reputation and credibility.

As a therapist, you must be familiar with the concept of group therapy activities for adults. You already understand the importance of creating connections and providing a shared space to individuals to help them grow their social skills.

Besides that, these sessions are more engaging and enriching, which helps clients come across new experiences. While it’s beneficial for clients, it also supports therapists in handling their caseloads better by letting them deal with multiple clients in less time.

Rather than having four back-to-back sessions, you can have one session with four clients. It not only saves time but also allows you to take a backseat, and the group becomes the driver of the session.

According to a study published in the European Journal of Psychiatry, group therapy is much more effective than Individual therapy in the long run.

Besides that, the American Psychological Association (APA) concluded that group therapy is more effective for mental conditions such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Their research shows that nearly three out of four individuals benefit from group therapy.

There’s no doubt that group therapy is one of the best ways to provide value to your clients. Now, the question is how you can achieve an effective group therapy session. This article not only touches the surface but dives deep into various methods that are tried and tested by therapists all over the world.

Understanding Group Therapy for Adults

You must already know that a group therapy session is more than just a few people sitting in a shared space. The session needs to be productive for the clients without harming their trust and confidentiality.

Therefore, it’s important to be a reliable host who plays the leadership role and regulates the entire session passively without directly controlling its path.

You must also be able to develop an environment where the patients feel safe and ready to share. Of course, it’ll not happen in the first session itself, but if they are ready to go forward with the next group session, the job’s done well.

According to the American Group Psychotherapy Association (AGPA), therapists have four main functions in group therapy:

• Executive Functions: The therapist sets the meeting, members, time, subject, and boundaries, and holds the complete responsibility of creating a stable environment.
• Monitoring: The client must record how the individuals are performing in the group therapy, note down their responses, highlight important behavioral aspects, and use them in one-on-one sessions to improve the client’s mental health condition.
• Emotional stimulation: The therapist should work as a motivator or catalyst that helps individuals in group therapy to encourage their participation and convey their emotions.

Understanding and Awareness: It’s the therapist’s role to introduce and make their clients familiar with each other and the reason why group therapy is introduced in the first place.

Rules to Set Before Beginning Group Therapy Activities for Adults

Apart from playing the above-mentioned roles, it is essential for therapists to set some ground rules before moving forward to the session. Setting rules will allow you to govern the therapy so that it stays on track and benefits both you and the clients.

• Maintaining Confidentiality: Though therapists are legally bound to maintain confidentiality, clients are not. Therefore, you must request all the clients to maintain confidentiality, and at the same time, don’t let them share any information that’s too sensitive.
• Keeping Relationships Professional: Though it is common for people during group therapy to develop close bonds, you must remind them that the best results can only be achieved by keeping it professional and unbiased.
• Respect and Active Listening: Everyone should actively listen to other members, which develops a supportive environment, ensuring that everyone feels heard and valued.
• No Judging and Criticizing: You must remind everyone to be open to everyone’s opinion and not allow passing any judgemental or criticizing comments. Keeping clients with similar problems will be more helpful.
• Participation and Engagement: You should set the rule that everyone gets an equal opportunity to participate, as it helps in making the session engaging for everyone and nobody feels left out.
• Avoid Distractions: People should be encouraged not to use mobile phones or get distracted from the conversation for the maximum benefit. Though you should not a rigid stop to this, setting it as a rule will make patients aware of what not to do.
• Staying on the topic: You should keep a check that people don’t go off topic and lead to discussions that aren’t fruitful and can lead to conflict.

No Substance Abuse: Needless to say, you should not allow anyone in group therapy who is under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Essential Group Therapy Activities

Now that the basics are set, we’ll let you know about some of the fun group therapy activities for adults that you can conduct during the sessions.

Icebreaker Question

This is an obvious activity that you’d conduct during the first session to create a familiar environment and assist everyone in getting to know each other. Though this activity seems basic, you can make it fun by adding a twist in how you ask questions.

For instance, you can select a theme and ask questions accordingly. You can club it with dice or chits and make it further interesting. The patient will play dice. The number of dice has a respective chit, each having a question written. This is an easy yet playful, engaging, and effective activity.

Storytelling Circle

Many therapist use this activity to bring out the hidden emotions in their patients. In this activity, one person starts the story, or you can do that. Then, the next person adds a line to it. The way the story develops is interesting and brings out the perspective of each individual. It shows whether the emotions are negative or positive, what attracts the person, and a lot more, just by knowing the line added.

Mindfulness Meditation

Not all activities require individuals to interact with each other. Sometimes, they can perform the activities individually in an environment where they feel they belong. Once they get familiar with each other, you can conduct a guided meditation activity for them. It will be more effective than the one-on-one meditation or regular session as they’ll be in a safer environment, knowing that their group members are performing the same activity.

Role-Playing Scenarios

This is one of the most effective ways to leverage group sessions and bring out the insights that stay hidden during one-on-one sessions. You can give different scenarios to individuals and see how they react to them. The scenario can have one or multiple individuals playing their roles and others all stay spectators.

You can make it even further by making it theme-based and clubbing it with other activities such as dancing or questioning. It will help you understand how a person reacts during different situations and improve his self-awareness during one-on-one sessions.

Letter Writing Therapy

This is one of the most powerful therapy techniques to bring our suppressed emotions and improve an individual’s mental health. You can ask people to write letters addressing people who are not with them now and then read them aloud after everyone is done with the task.

However, this is a sensitive activity and if you believe not all individuals are ready for it, then you can ditch it. A less sensitive version is to ask them to write a letter to their younger self or you can have similar scenarios or hypothetical people to whom patients can address their letters.

Group Feedback Session

This is an important step in taking the group’s bonding to the next level. You can ask every individual to give their feedback to other individuals in a constructive way and not in a critical aspect. During such a session, you must keep strong governance over what individuals are speaking and make sure it doesn’t hurt the other patient’s emotions. If you find something negative or judgmental, you must jump into the conversation to keep it positive.

Specialized Group Therapy Techniques

There are several group therapy techniques developed in recent years. However, some of them are found to be more effective than others, and these are the ones we’ll discuss in this section.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Group Techniques

A study published on the Effectiveness of cognitive behavioral group therapy for depression in routine practice in BMC Psychiatry showed a significant reduction in depression who received group CBT.

The technique aims to identify behavioral patterns and regulate emotions. During the group sessions, members identify distorted or negative thinking patterns and replace them with more balanced and realistic thoughts. During the session, your role is to facilitate conversation, track down the thoughts, and share relevant insights with each patient.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills Training

This therapy technique is effective when you have to teach patients how to handle difficult situations, develop tolerance, and improve relationships.

During DBT group therapy sessions, you can introduce mindfulness practices to increase self-awareness, such as focusing on breath or body sensations. Group members can also practice techniques like distraction, self-soothing, or radical acceptance to manage overwhelming emotions.

Psychodrama

This technique is best implemented in group therapy sessions as it focuses on trauma healing and role reversal.

While exercising the Psychodrama technique, you ask individuals to play various roles in different situations from another person’s perspective, which helps them understand other people’s emotions and behaviors.

You can also introduce other role-playing group therapy activities for adults such as improvisational drama and acting out real-life key moments of their lives to express feelings and interact with others in novel ways, facilitating emotional release and growth.

Gestalt Group Therapy

Gestalt group therapy gives a way to self-acceptance and allows individuals to accept who they are. It helps to integrate the thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Under this, participants can perform activities such as the empty chair technique, where they talk to an empty chair that symbolizes a person who is not present there. It helps to get over unfinished business. It’s best done in group therapy technique where patients get external support from other members.

Managing Your Group Therapy for Adults with DENmaar

DENmaar offers tools exclusively created for managing group therapy sessions. With our application, you can easily schedule group therapy sessions for different participants. Besides that, it’s also built to reduce no-shows by sending personalized reminders and managing client relationships. 

It helps you improve your therapy sessions by directly requesting feedback and sending follow-up messages, allowing you to consider the patient’s perspective as well.

Rest assured that the application follows HIPAA, state-specific, and payer-specific compliance and rules. Overall, DENmaar is your go-to solution to take your group therapy sessions to the next level.