BROWNSVILLE — One of the biggest fears those with a mental illness may have is whether seeking help automatically gets them sent to a psychiatric hospital.
That is not at all the case, said Dayana Zamora, the Brownsville service area manager for Tropical Texas Behavioral Health.
“A lot of people think if they come that we’ll keep them here. We don’t do that,” Zamora said.
“The services we provide are a lot like how you would get treatment for diabetes. You just take your treatment every three months. We don’t start everyone on medication.”
Tropical Texas offers services for adult mental health, youth mental health, substance abuse, and intellectual and developmental disabilities, and it also has a new primary care service.
A case manager is assigned to each individual to get them the proper care and check in on the person.
As part of their recovery process, patients are welcome to stay at Tropical Texas from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. to interact with others and take classes, Zamora said.
“We even have peers that are in the recovery stages who are helping the newcomers to the program to make them feel comfortable,” Zamora said.
Thirty agencies attended Saturday’s 50th anniversary celebration to provide information about the services they offer, including two psychiatric hospitals.
“It was pretty awesome to see them come together to do what they could to educate the community,” Zamora said.
Tropical Texas extended the invitation to current patients and their families, because part of the recovery process includes educating the family. Another reason is because a mental illness also can be present in another member of the family, Zamora said.
Mental health is a sensitive subject and often can have a lot of stigmas associated with it, Zamora said.
“It’s a hidden world. We wanted to have an open house to erase the stigmas behind mental illness,” Zamora said.
