The Healing Place
While many services have existed for HIV positive individuals over the course of the epidemic, few, if any, HIV-specific services have been available for the affected, both children and other family members. In October of 2002, the University of Miami and Jackson Mental Health Hospital Center opened The Healing Place, a clinic dedicated to providing compassionate comprehensive mental health care to HIV positive individuals of all ages and their affected family members.
The Healing Place allows specialty mental health services to be provided across generations in families living with HIV / AIDS and provides the level of expertise necessary to address the highly complex and challenging biopsychosocial needs of these families. The Healing Place is dedicated to working together with primary care providers to ensure that mental health services are available to all infected individuals and their affected family members with the goal that through coordinating medical and mental health services, the devastating emotional consequences of this disease can be addressed and minimized for this very vulnerable population.
In 2001 and 2002, the UM/JMH primary medical care system scheduled appointments for over 10,000 HIV positive individuals, of whom more than 5,000 came for their appointments. Since opening in October 15, 2003, The Healing Place has had over 750 patient visits for mental health services. Due to federal requirements that an HIV positive individual receive a yearly mental health screen, a system is in place to identify those needing mental health assessments. Given the number of individuals that are seen at UM/JMH for primary care and this federal mandate, there is a rapidly increasing need for such services and a growing awareness that these needs could rapidly overwhelm the capacity of current staff.
