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We at the Six Bridges Clinic provide compassionate empathic care for every single person that walks into our clinic. Substance abuse disorders are increasingly prevalent in the United States especially in young adults and adolescents. We designed Six Bridges to address several unmet needs in Arkansas specifically for young people. It’s a different world in the kinds of challenges that they’re facing and I think adults need to be able to say you know I don’t know what it’s like to be a kid right now but I want to do whatever I can to support my kid. So we recognized that there was a gap in services for these kids so Arkansas Children’s Hospital and UAMS partnered to create the Six Bridges Clinic. Blue and You foundation was generous enough to give us the funding to get Six Bridges Clinic started. Six Bridges is a unique clinic. It offers an opportunity for an adolescent to take the first step uh towards their recovery. The big thing is there’s a real need for substance abuse treatment for adolescence in outpatient. There aren’t that many programs in Arkansas especially in the Little Rock area. Our goal is to meet the patient where they’re at but also meet the parents where they’re at. Stigma is a a huge huge barrier for uh people accessing mental health care and also substance abuse care when a kid or a teen
approaches a family asking for help that’s a huge step. The first reaction from the family should be offering supportive environment for the teen to bring them to an appropriate treatment. You know if you’re stigmatized that that’s the kids who use, how do they move out of that group and where do they get support so part of our role is helping them find the ways to do that. Because our providers are child and adolescent psychiatrists they are trained and very passionate about treating the underlying mental health issues that often are really the root cause of the substance use. So kids these days are exposed to multiple stressors starting from their family to school. The most important thing in treating substance use is
identifying the problem and providing education to that problem and then providing appropriate access to treatments. We have an epidemic in our country we’re seeing more and more kids struggling with the use of substances broadly we’re not taking care of our youth the way that we need to. Our goal is to really help these kids see that they have some value
to their life that they can accomplish good things they’re braver than they think they’re smarter than they think and if they just work with someone and believe in themselves they can accomplish anything they want. It can be really really hard to take that first step. It’s hard for a family to say “Yes someone in our family is struggling with substances and yes we need
help.” We have seen people’s lives just completely turn around the first thing I tell them is “You’re not in trouble.” And then I congratulate them for taking a first step to come to this clinic. Our goal at Six Bridges is to provide treatments that are essential for these children with substance use problems to help them realize their potential and be successful in their life.
