Today we’d like to introduce you to Brandon Fielding.
Hi Brandon, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
As a family of practitioners, we saw a gap between normal therapy services and acute services, like inpatient. All we have as a society is the ER, which isn’t set up to handle mental health. As a way to address that gap, and take the load off of ER workers and first responders (like the police or firefighters/paramedics), we created Birchstone Mental Health Urgent Care.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Our biggest challenge has been to help the community know that we exist! Our communities are so used to the ER being the only resource for immediate care that our work has largely been about disrupting that pipeline and making ourselves known as an alternative. It has also been hard that ER’s can’t refer patients to us after they’ve come into their facilities, because they have to treat- it would be better if they could send the patient directly to us instead of after a 6 hr ER wait and ineffective intervention.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Birchstone is a family practice in the literal sense. My father, Dr. Kelly Fielding, is a clinical psychologist who has been doing this work for forty years, first through his own private practice and then through Birchstone Psychotherapy and Assessment; my mother, Dr. Gayle Fielding, holds a DSW and has practiced on and off while raising children; I have ten years of psychotherapy practice and recently completed my doctorate; and my wife, Kelli Dougal, is an LICSW who specializes in play therapy with children. Across the four of us we cover the full age range, from young kids in the playroom to adults in long-term therapy, and the clinic’s specialty is trauma and attachment treatment alongside formal psychological assessment. That combination is an unusually strong fit for mental health urgent care, because most of what walks through an urgent-care door is, underneath the presenting crisis, a trauma or attachment wound that has to be understood before it can be stabilized. What sets us apart is that we are still clinicians first, not administrators standing one room away from the work; the people building the practice are the same people sitting in the rooms doing it, which keeps the work honest. What I am proudest of is that we built a mental health urgent care from the ground up in a market that did not have one, and that we did it as a family rather than as a corporation.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
Absolutely. Two very important books are “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk, regarding trauma treatment, and “The Journey of The Heroic Parent,” by Brad Reedy, which talks at length about attachment and relationships.
Pricing:
- $250 for an urgent mental health visit, compared to ER costs.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.birchstonepa.com
