Our Approach to Mental Health Care
As a mental health provider, Good Heart Recovery serves to treat individuals with a variety of mental health disorders ranging from trauma disorders to generalized anxiety, depression, anger, and bipolar disorders. Mental health therapy is vital to the success of someone whose life has been negatively affected by the symptoms of such disorders. Our program serves to provide mental health treatment unlike any other mental health services in Santa Barbara. With truly individualized care and treatment plans, we treat mental illness with a 5:1 treatment team to client ratio. There are five active Doctoral and Masters level clinicians focused on your entire treatment throughout our whole program, supporting you through your treatment plan and helping you and/or your loved one find who they really are again.
“One in five people are currently suffering from mental illness. One in five. We at Good Heart Recovery are seeking to change this devastating statistic. We do so through one-of-a-kind services that directly address the underlying emotions and beliefs many have come to live by. We’re experts in shifting consciousness towards a good life, one that transforms mental pain and suffering into healing and hope.”
Our mental health outpatient program offers the following treatment services to Santa Barbara County:
PTSD Treatment
Post-traumatic stress disorder is caused by the direct or indirect experience of a traumatic event. The stigmatization surrounding PTSD and the lack of knowledge around what PTSD is can cause a lot of people to not seek treatment for the pain they are experiencing. PTSD is treatable and trauma is very common.
At least 50% of all people have experienced a traumatic event in their lifetime. Treatment for PTSD can vary, however, all treatment focuses on helping the individual process the traumatic event, gain skills to understanding life following a traumatic event, and find meaning, purpose, and value in continuing to grow towards happiness. Good Heart Recovery provides many PTSD treatment services including: Group trauma therapy processes, one on one mental health PTSD counseling, psychiatric assessments and medication to help with acute and chronic symptoms of PTSD, and a thriving therapeutic community that serves to normalize the struggle that comes along with PTSD.
Trauma Therapy
Not all trauma develops into PTSD, there are underlying traumas that root back to our childhood and forward that cause many of us to suffer from a lack of identity, avoidance of success or failure or an inability to maintain stable relationships. 
Some of these traumas include being bullied, losing a loved one, seeing a tragic event unfold, suffering from homelessness or drug and alcohol use, being involved in the legal system, living in an impoverished community or household and more. There are many trauma therapy services that Good Heart Recovery provides that help to bring people back to a normal state of mind and release themselves from the trauma of their past including: Mindfulness-based stress reduction group therapy and individual therapy, psychiatric medication management, psychospiritual counseling, and deep processing of traumatic events using existential processes.
Depression Treatment
Depression is extremely common. It doesn’t have to look like staying in bed all day, not feeling interested in what you normally do, feeling angry and/or worthless, although it certainly can. Depression can also develop as a monotonic underlying silent yet powerful pain that lies underneath everything someone does, says, thinks, and desires or avoids. From a clinical perspective, we understand what depression is. 
Professionally, we know how to treat it. Humanly, we have experienced it, understand it deeply, and work extremely well at combating it in others through various methods. Many of the depression treatment methods we provide at Good Heart Recovery include individual depression counseling, psychospiritual sessions to address the existential questions of purpose and meaning in one’s life, antidepressant medication along with psychiatric evaluations, and group therapy to normalize the feelings of depression and learn skills to not allow depression to take over your life again.
Anxiety Treatment
Anxiety is related to fear, mistrust, and physical and psychological uncomfortability. Anxiety is among one of the most prevalent mental health disorders in our country and there are so many of us who suffer from
it. Anxiety is rooted within us as a result of these fears, mistrusts, and discomforts that lead us to believe that something is wrong, will be wrong, and/or will not change for the better. At Good Heart Recovery, we understand that anxiety can be extremely debilitating and can alter the true nature of yourself and everything around you. It can mask the goodness, the greatness, the desired. Some of the anxiety treatment methods that we provide at Good Heart Recovery include the following: anxiety therapy in groups, anxiety therapy one-on-one sessions, psychiatric medication assessments, anti-anxiety medications, community support groups, healthy coping skill learning, and more.
Bipolar Disorder Treatment
Bipolar disorder treatment is necessary when the symptoms of the disorder have become unmanageable. Good Heart Recovery understands bipolar disorder and provides the type of treatment that can sustain long-term healing. Bipolar disorder behaviors
consist of times when the person feels very good at one period and can quickly shift to feeling very low and depressed. At times, the “high” can not be associated with extreme behavior, but it may be more subtle and seem like a short euphoria. Bipolar disorder treatment addresses that the dysregulation of one’s mood can cause one’s life to become difficult to balance and can alter relationships and responsibilities significantly. Our facility provides bipolar disorder treatment including bipolar disorder group therapy sessions, bipolar disorder individual mental health counseling, bipolar medication management, bipolar psychiatrist appointments, and more.
Behavioral Health Services
Behavioral health services address all of the above mentioned mental health disorders and so much more. It is Good Heart Recovery’s mission to provide high-quality behavioral health services to the community at large. 
Behavioral health services that we provide include the following: Clinical case management services, one on one behavioral health therapy, behavioral health group therapy, and behavioral health psychiatric support including assessments and medication management. Our goal is to provide all of our clients with healthy coping skills, and long-term solutions to their behavioral health issues so that they do not have to keep living a life full of pain and discomfort. To learn more about our behavioral health services, please visit our behavioral health page found here.
Good Heart Recovery is the premier mental health outpatient center in Santa Barbara specializing in humanistic and integrative interventions. From full-day programs to outpatient group therapy, our mental health facility serves varying situations and schedules.
Our Mental Health Outpatient Program
Our Santa Barbara CA Mental health outpatient program includes several services, many of which are not offered in other treatment providers clinical structure. From up to five individual sessions a week, significantly more than the typical once a week meeting with a therapist, to interactive and life-changing group therapies, our program is one that many of our client’s report:
“you truly have to experience to understand how much it will change your life”
Our program is cost-effective, can be fully covered by most HMO and PPO insurance policies, and ranges from 5-15% of the cost of typical mental health treatment in California. Our therapy approach is unique and is driven by evidence-based therapies and the evidence of what we know heals human beings in the most effective way possible. Our mental health professionals, therapists, counselors, and doctors have decades of experience working with all types of mental health disorders with great success. Read below for more information about our mental health services in Santa Barbara.
Our mental health program provides the following services:
Psychiatric Assessments
Medication Management
Psychological Evaluations
Master’s Level One-on-One Therapy
Psychospiritual Counseling
Clinical Case Management
CBT & DBT Methods
Mindfulness Methods
Mental Health Group Sessions
Mental Health Experiential Therapy
Good Heart Recovery offers three different outpatient levels of mental health care, each designed to align with an individual’s course of progress and symptom presentation. Every level of mental health care offers group therapy sessions that are specifically designed each morning and afternoon based on the individual members of the group. The schedules above reflect a typical week at each of our levels of care. Please note, the Intensive Outpatient Program can be mornings or afternoons and the Outpatient Program can contain varying days and times. In addition to group therapy, each of our clients at the top two levels of care receives up to six individual sessions a week, every week while they are in mental health treatment:
Partial Hospitalization
Intensive Outpatient
Outpatient
Good Heart Recovery provides uncomparable mental health therapy in the city of Santa Barbara. Every client success story that originates from our mental health facility notes that the type of mental health therapy they received was the reason why they are no longer suffering from depression, anxiety, trauma, anger, or any other mental health issue that brought them to us. Individual mental health therapy sessions at Good Heart Recovery are confidential, safe, comfortable, trustworthy, and one-of-a-kind. Our mental health counselors are experienced, educated, and truly want the best for every person they work with.
PSYCHIATRIC APPOINTMENTS
Each week, our mental health clients are assessed by our medical doctor and PhD in psychoanalysis, Dr. Margorie Gies for medication needs and medical evaluations.
CLINICAL THERAPY
Weekly one-on-one mental health therapy sessions with a Master’s level clinician allow for each of our clients to address the underlying causes of their mental health disorders.
CLINICAL CASE
MANAGEMENT
One a week sessions with a Master’s level case manager provides structured and progressive workshops for clients to gain future employment and educational goals and work on legal and housing issues, as well as relapse prevention and crisis plans.
PSYCHOSPIRITUAL CONSULTATIONS
Our co-founder meets with each client every week to discuss the ‘bigger questions’ about mental health recovery such as: What’s next? Who am I and who do I want to be? How can I release the past? and how to put all the pieces of progress together into a plan for the future.
FAMILY CONNECTION SESSIONS
We work with families of our mental health clients to schedule conjoined family connection sessions for the client and their loved ones to come together and discuss the next steps towards reunification and a deeper understanding of one another.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENTS
To track our clients’ progress over the course of treatment, we complete psychological assessments upon intake, monthly, and upon discharge to determine our clients’ levels of hope, authenticity, depression, anxiety, mindfulness, automatic thoughts, self-compassion, and loneliness.
Our mental health program treats many different mental health disorders at a reasonable and affordable price. We are trusted by and contracted with several different HMO and PPO health insurance policies including, but not limited to, Anthem Blue Cross, TriCare, MultiPlan, HealthNet, Magellan and Blue Shield of California. We also take clients who need to pay out of pocket and do provide a sliding scale for individuals who have limited financial resources. Please contact us for more information regarding the cost of our mental health program.
Your Mental Health Outpatient Treatment Team
Over 80 years combined experience treating mental health
Good Heart Recovery’s compassionate and dedicated team is comprised of a multidisciplinary group of mental health clinicians and counselors. Uniquely executively and medically run by doctoral-level clinicians and clinically run by seasoned masters level psychotherapists, our team is committed to finding, treating, and reconciling the underlying issues that bring individuals into mental health treatment.
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Marjorie Gies, MD, PhDBoard-Certified and Licensed Medical Doctor -
Jill Frandsen, MA, LMFTClinical Director
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Daria WendkosLead Admissions Coordinator
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Crystal Germanetti, MA, AMFTFamily Therapist and Alumni Outreach
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Alexah HartPrimary Therapist
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Julien SantiagoPrimary Therapist
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Amy ZimmermanPrimary Therapist
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Rose Miller, MS, LVN, LAADAC #113869Detox Nurse
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Jessica Flores, CATC IDirector of Reimbursement
Mental health is the ability to have your emotions, your thinking, and your behavior regulated and supporting you in a manner that guides you to happiness and healthy lifestyles. It is when your mental health begins to not serve you in this way that you may want to seek help for what may be a mental illness.
Mental illness is when a person’s changing mood, thoughts, or feelings are affecting their life in a significant way. If you are on this page, it’s likely that you or a loved one is experiencing emotions, thoughts, or moods that are causing you to seek or desire help. There are multiple factors that go into a person’s mental health becoming mental illness, and there are several ways to help mental illness.
People can get help for mental health in many ways. Serving the Santa Barbara community in California and anyone who comes to our facility from across the country, Good Heart Recovery provides several unique methods fused within general mental health treatments including group therapy, individual therapy, community support, case management, psychiatrist appointments, and more.
Mental health treatment involves addressing the underlying and concurrent issues related to mental illness. Mental health psychotherapy, mental health medication, mental health case management, mental health hospitalization, mental health support groups, mental health self-help books and groups, and mental health facility treatment are all mental health treatment options to get help for mental health issues. Good Heart Recovery provides premier, affordable, currently available mental health treatment that takes most health insurance so you and/or your loved one can get the mental health treatment you’re seeking now!
Someone should seek help for mental health when they feel their mind, body, or any other aspects of themselves are being negatively affected by their emotions, thoughts, or actions. If you feel like you’re struggling or if you see someone severely struggling, seeking help for mental health is the next best step to take. In Santa Barbara, Good Heart Recovery provides mental health help in many different forms and we would love to answer any questions you have.
There are many different types of mental health problems. Some of them include, but are not limited to, the following: depression, stress and anxiety, sleep issues, mania and bipolar, psychosis, personality disorders, eating disorders, and thoughts of suicide or self-harming oneself. Depending on the exact type of mental health problems
Common mental disorders that we see in adults include mood disorders, substance use disorders, anxiety disorders, and depression disorders. Every one of these mental disorders is treatable and we have seen great success in treating them in our facility. The causes for each disorder vary depending on the life that the individual has lived. We will explore your life with you and help you determine how you developed a common mental disorder and how to best relieve yourself of it.
The 5 signs of mental illness include a change in your personality, mood changes such as high highs and low lows, social isolation and withdrawal, changes in self care including unhealthy eating and sleeping habits, and an increase in worry, anxiety, fear, or stress. We work with all of these symptoms and can help you get back on track in a short amount of time.
I Need Help
You are not alone. We are here to help.
My Loved One Needs Help
Let’s come up with a solution together.