Soon, teens have somewhere they can go in Salem for both mental health and addiction treatment.
Insight Northwest Recovery opened its first location in Eugene last year and provides telehealth throughout the state. It will soon open a new location in Salem, offering anyone age 12 and up support with mental health, addiction treatment or a combination of the two.
Founder Josh Gotlib, a licensed counselor, said their program fills a gap by serving people who need more intensive care than one-on-one therapy can provide, but are still able to go home between sessions rather than getting inpatient treatment. It will accept Medicaid, known as the Oregon Health Plan, and major insurance providers.
Though they’ll also offer supplemental psychiatry and family therapy, the organization specializes in group therapy that provides a support network of peers led by a professional therapist. That means teens will get help alongside other people their age who understand what they’re struggling with.
“Individual therapy, there’s only so much of it that someone can engage in. Evidence-based treatment shows that intensive group counseling provides higher outcomes. A therapist can’t sit with a client three hours, two days a week. The evidence doesn’t support that, and insurance companies don’t cover it,” Gotlib said.
Over the past few years, more options to help struggling teens in Salem have opened, including a day treatment center for intensive mental health care, and Discovery Academy, a public high school for students in recovery. But providers say such efforts, while important, still only reach a fraction of the need.
Insight is also the only place in Oregon where teens can get in-person help with mental health and substance use at the same time, Gotlib said, rather than focusing on one of the two. He said there are also very few available options for a teen who wants to stay in school while getting treatment.
“There’s nothing else in the state for them,” he said. “It’s really important to treat both because if we’re only treating addiction or we’re only treating mental health, we’re not looking at the full picture of what’s going on with the individual.”
About 600 middle and high school students in the Salem-Keizer School District are navigating both mental health issues and substance use, according to Chris Moore, the district’s director of mental health.
Moore said in an email that he’s been meeting with their team to discuss ways to bring their services into local high schools, and he’s “very excited about their robust, flexible and highly responsive treatment model.”
During group therapy sessions, about ten people will be grouped by age, with sessions for people ages 12-14, 15-17, 18-26 and 26 and older. Some groups may focus on substance use, others on depression and suicidality, and others for people experiencing both addiction and mental health challenges.
It’s the kind of treatment that could have helped Gotlib over a decade ago, when he sought help for both addiction and mental health issues and couldn’t find it.
“I really had to claw my way through the system. When I was a teenager, this program would have been extremely helpful for me,” he said. “And also, I’ve had friends that I’ve lost to suicide or overdose that could have really benefited from a program like this.”
The expansion to Salem is in response to high demand for treatment options, especially for people on Medicaid. Gotlib said that access can help curb suicide, teen drop outs and overdoses, among other impactful community issues.
“There’s not a lot of resources here,” Gotlib said. “People really wanted us to be opening here versus opening in Portland or Bend, this seems like the place that has the largest need.”
After an assessment, patients will get started with either four weeks of intensive day treatment, with 20 hours per week of group counseling, or intensive outpatient treatment which is 10 hours per week over three months.
The groups are formed on a rolling basis, so someone entering group therapy will talk to someone who’s been making progress over months.
“I think it’s extremely helpful for young people to see their peers getting better,” Gotlib said.
Gotlib said that they work on a harm-reduction model, rather than an abstinence-based approach. While they support complete abstinence from drugs and alcohol, they prioritize stabilization and mental health first.
“The goal of this level of care is stabilization. Most people are coming in, they’re suicidal, so those (symptoms) have subsided, dramatically, reduced significantly, and they’re in a place stability-wise, where they can then go and engage in individual counseling and do true trauma healing work,” Gotlib said.
Insight plans to hold its first in-person appointments at its Salem clinic at 2525 12th St. S.E. on Oct. 6, and is already accepting new clients for telehealth consultations and assessments.
Contact reporter Abbey McDonald: [email protected] or 503-575-1251.
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Abbey McDonald joined the Salem Reporter in 2022. She previously worked as the business reporter at The Astorian, where she covered labor issues, health care and social services. A University of Oregon grad, she has also reported for the Malheur Enterprise, The News-Review and Willamette Week.
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