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What to Expect

What To Expect

When You Call for Your First Appointment

Before your first appointment, we will ask you for some information to make the visit most efficient. We will also ask you to bring some important information with you.

Our Intake Coordinator will review with you the reason you are requesting services, assist you with insurance and service fee questions, and provide you with information about accessing our services and the location where you will receive services.

If there are remaining questions regarding your insurance or payments, you will be referred to our Billing Department for more information.

At Your First Appointment

When you arrive for your first appointment, you should bring:
• insurance card
• co-pay or deductible due at time of appointment
• a list of your medications, their dosage, or the medications themselves

When a legal guardian is assigned, that guardian must accompany you for your first appointment. Please bring Guardianship papers, if applicable.

Your care will begin with a comprehensive evaluation to get a clear understanding of the help you are seeking, to understand your situation, and to settle on a shared plan of action. You will meet with your clinician in a private room where he or she will provide you with some information about what will be discussed in the appointment, and information about confidentiality.

These are topics that are typically covered in an initial evaluation:
• Reason for coming to the appointment
• History of current symptoms or difficulties
• Contributing factors
• Past psychiatric history
• General medical history
• Current medications
• Medication allergies
• Trauma history
• Experience with nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, and drugs
• Social history such as living situation, work or school, family and friendships, education history

The clinician will then work with you to put it all together and come up with a plan for the next steps. These steps may include learning more about your history, discussing treatment options, and beginning treatment, if that treatment makes sense to both of you.

Sometimes you and the evaluating clinician will conclude that the care you need is offered outside of West Central Behavioral Health. If this is the case, our staff will assist you in connecting with that source of care.

When Your Child Is In Treatment

On Your First Visit

You will be asked to complete a questionnaire providing information on your child’s health and your family status.

Please bring:

  • insurance card
  • co-pay or deductible due at time of appointment
  • a list of your medications, their dosage, or the medications themselves

A counselor will meet with the parents/caregivers and child and provide information regarding confidentiality. He/she will listen to your concerns and those of your child and gather information for an initial assessment.

This information may include discussion of recent warning signs in your child, such as a sad or hopeless mood, changes in eating or sleeping habits, difficulties with behavior at school, or injuring self by hitting or cutting.

Together with the counselor, the family will make a treatment plan. A treatment plan is a list of steps that will be taken to achieve positive change; it identifies each family member’s roles in achieving the goals of the plan, and ways to know when the goals have been reached.

Will my child meet alone with a therapist?

You should plan to come to each appointment with your child. For younger children, treatment almost always includes their families. Older teens may meet alone with a counselor. Treatment often includes family and group therapy sessions as well as individual therapy.

What about privacy?

At WCBH we understand the importance of privacy. Written permission is requested before providing anyone with information regarding your child’s care. Some older teens want their treatment to be private from their families; our staff works with teenagers to maintain privacy when we can.

 

EXPERIENCING A CRISIS?
Call or text the New Hampshire Rapid
Response Access Point 833-710-6477

NH988.com (chat)

OUTSIDE NH?
National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline

988 (call or text)

West Central Behavioral Health is a nonprofit organization which relies on gifts from private donors, corporate partners and foundations. Gifts are exempt from Federal Income Tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Gifts to West Central Behavioral Health are tax deductible. EIN: 22-2645978

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