Orbit Health

BVM: What advice would you give your health professionals for their own mental wellbeing? Kaftarian: “We’re national providers with psychiatrists and nurse practitioners in all 50 states. We also provide treatment to community mental health centers. Inpatient and outpatient units at these centers help people who have limited means; the same people who are more at risk for incarceration. And there are many of these clinics that we cover. “I’ve been doing psychiatry for quite a long time and I always felt that the way to protect from burnout is to make sure you practice self-care. Getting good exercise, enough sleep, but that’s only one part of it. It’s also how you frame it. If you approach your patient in a way where you feel responsible for all the outcomes and all their life issues, then you will feel overwhelmed. You need to approach it as, you’re there to help… there is endless pain and suffering in this world but like any other medical provider you have to compartmentalize. You’re empathetic, you listen, you care but when the appointment is done, you need to stop thinking about the patient and move on to the next one. It’s all how you approach it.” BVM: What role does education play in Orbit Health? Kaftarian: “We do education through Orbit University – a division of our company that does online training for health care professionals who deal with mentally ill people, and non-health care professionals like custody staff and police officers, to get mental health sensitivity training. To make sure that when they’re encountering somebody that they’re aware of the possibility of mental health problems. And if so, that they approach them and deal with them in a sensitive manner. Also, we train them on how to de-escalate mentally ill people. Sometimes psychotic or manic people or that have any significant condition, might escalate and cause onsite. So it became crucial to have other means of accessing mental health care. For that reason, a lot of people went without care, so now I expect a wave of mental illness post-COVID that is going to require society to really focus on increasing resources for mental health care. We’re already seeing an increased attention on mental health and people understanding the value of mental health care. So COVID did heighten our awareness of the significant mental health problems that are happening in America. But as time goes on, statistics of substance abuse and numbers of suicides are getting worse and it’s not going away any time soon.”