IMYOS refers to Intensive Mobile Youth Outreach Service and has a target audience comprised of focuses on young people whose needs are multiple and complex (OYH, n. d.). Outreach care is performed by specializing groups of the service providers who visit the clients in the settings the patients find most comfortable (for instance, their homes). That way, the approach they practice is rather patient-centered. The IMYOS teams make an assessment of the environments in which their clients live and organise an essential support for both the individual and their community addressing their needs (OYH, n. d.).
The patient is a 16-year old high school student Alan Fielding, who has a number of issues such as lack of academic success, binge drinking, “low mood”, lack of energy, and behaviour issues when he is affected by alcohol. In addition, Alan has recently shared with his girlfriend that he is considering committing a suicide sometime when his parents are out. The boy’s parents, peers, and teachers are concerned about his emotional and mental health and require help from the side of a team of professionals who could combine several approaches in order to intervene Alan’s multiple and complex problems. The current treatment prescribed to the boy by the local GP includes Fluoxetine to address his mood and energy issues that are deemed to be caused by stress at school and relationship problems the boy has been experiencing. The medication has not been making any difference; Alan’s stress and depressed moods persisted.
The assessment and treatment plan for Alan should be comprised of several different stages each of which would focus on a specific aspect:
- Step One would include the assessment of the boy’s family environment and relationship with the parents (Yarra Ranges Council, 2015). An individual’s family, especially when the individual is a child or an adolescent, is one of the most important and influential communities with which they are in constant communication. As a result, a family is capable of producing a massive impact on the patient addressing the dangerous or unwanted behaviours. In Alan’s case, both parents are involved in labor at farms and the boy seem to be interested in work his parents do more than in his studies. This interest may be employed as a healing labour therapy. For instance, Alan could be asked to help his father at a farm some days a week. That way, he would gain experience and knowledge of farming labour and get to practice an occupation he is excited about. Moreover, making a contribution to his local community and doing tangible work would raise the boy’s self-esteem and produce a positive effect on his mood. In addition, of the boy regularly engages in physical work, it will ensure exercise that may improve his levels of serotonin. Finally, breaking a cycle and doing something new could help Alan get rid of his depressive mood and also limit the free time he could spend drinking with friends.
- Step Two would involve the cooperation of the boy’s parents and school teachers. With the help of an IMYOS professional, both communities could share the knowledge they have about Alan’s behaviours and issues. Further, the two environments may combine their effort and collaborate in order to bring back Alan’s interest in learning and stay in communication with each other in order to follow the boy’s improvements. Besides, the farm where Alan would be allowed to work from time to time should have an authority representing the community and cooperating with the IMYOS team.
- Step Three is focused on counselling or therapy for Alan that would assess his problems. It is possible that the boy should stop taking Fluoxetine before he gets too far and increases his likeliness of withdrawal. The therapist of IMYOS would visit Alan at his home and also engage his parents in the therapy (OYH, n. d.). The role of the therapist would be to perform a professional assessment of Alan’s emotional problems and their correlations with the environmental factors (family, relationship with Amanda, school, peer influence, to name a few) but also to educate his close ones about the existing problems, its mechanisms, and the most suitable interventions. Since Alan is a young individual, it is possible that medical treatment may not be necessary in his situation. Instead, a combination of new activities and focuses could become an essential part of his therapy in order to facilitate a faster recovery. All in all, the main tasks for the therapists to address would be Alan’s drinking, relationship problems, mood, and behaviour issues. The therapist would play a role of an important figure in Alan’s life with whom the boy would share his problems since it is quite obvious that he feels stuck, misunderstood, and out of place which results in his suicidal thoughts.
- Step Four is appropriate in a case if Alan’s mood problem is recognised as a clinical issue and diagnosed accordingly. In this situation, a multi-disciplinary treatment would be applied. Such approach would involve a team of a counsellor and a clinical psychologist who would aim at studying Alan’s emotional problem and his everyday life factors in correlation.
References
OYH. (n. d.).Intensive Services. Web.
Yarra Ranges Council. (2015). Victoria’s mental health strategy & young people. Web.