TTUHSC Opens New Behavioral Health and Wellness Clinic

Clinic Offers Face-to-Face Services, Telemedicine

• By Melissa Whitfield
• March 1, 2023
• Health

The current mental health crisis has found many patients wanting but not being able to get treatment. A new clinic, years in the making, aims to improve access. Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony and tour for the new Your Life Behavioral Health and Wellness Clinic March 1, 2023.

TTUHSC President Lori Rice-Spearman, Ph.D., said the clinic is a culmination of work which began six years ago when she was dean of the School of Health Professions. In 2016, more than 80 percent of Texas counties were designated as mental health professional shortage areas. Today, 248 of 254 counties in Texas are designated by the Health Resources and Services Administration as a mental health care health professional shortage area.

“We’re here to care for the health of the people who live in this region,” Rice-Spearman said. “Comprehensive health care encompasses a person’s physical and mental health. This clinic helps to address the needs in mental health for the communities we serve and truly represents our vision to transform health care through innovation and collaboration.”

The new clinic is housed in the TTUHSC School of Health Professions. The clinic is staffed by Ph.D. and master’s level clinicians who will take into account mental health and impacting factors, including substance use disorders, life stressors, crises and stress-related physical symptoms of the diverse populations of West Texas.

In a listening tour conducted throughout the university’s 108-county service area, community members overwhelmingly said they lacked access to mental health services. As a result, the School of Health Professions added the Department of Clinical Counseling and Mental Health to train more mental health professionals in the fall of 2017. The next step was to establish an in-house mental health clinic for its service area and build services to include access via telemedicine.

Director for the clinic is Chris Townsend, Ph.D., School of Health Professions assistant professor and a licensed clinical addiction specialist.

Services are offered face-to-face or through telehealth technology and include: mental health and addiction evaluations; mental health, addiction and rehabilitation counseling therapy for children and adults (individual); group therapy for children and adults; referrals; and nurse on demand for after-hours crisis response.

Clinicians provide evidence-based practices to ensure positive outcomes.

Medicaid, private insurance and self-pay is accepted.

For more information, call 806-743-2018.