Mobile Mental Health has new name
Friday, January 25, 2008
By RHODA A. PICKETT
Staff Reporter
With expanded services and a desire to move away from the stigma associated with mental health treatment, an old Mobile care provider has changed its name to AltaPointe. "It's something we have been contemplating for a long time," said Tuerk Schlesinger , chief executive officer of AltaPointe Systems Inc., formerly Mobile Mental Health.
Across the nation, mental health facilities are changing to meet the different needs of their communities, so that they are no longer just considered mental health centers, Schlesinger said. "Most people don't want to hear, much less talk, about mental illness and the many and varied symptoms that go along with it," AltaPointe officials said in a release. "Removing the words 'mental health' from the name also helps to remove some of the stigma associated with the old name." Schlesinger also said that the name no longer suggests that the agency's services are limited to Mobile County. Its service area also includes Washington County.
AltaPointe Health Systems oversees a community-based, regional system of mental health, mental retardation and substance-abuse services. Some of the expanded services include a partnership AltaPointe has formed with Mobile Infirmary and the University of South Alabama Medical Center, Schlesinger said. AltaPointe psychiatrists are in the Department of Psychiatry at USA's College of Medicine and oversee the psychiatric unit on the fifth floor of Mobile Infirmary, officials said. "We hope to have more of these contracts," said Carol Mann, AltaPointe spokeswoman.
AltaPointe is Alabama's largest regional community mental health provider with more than 670 clinical and non-clinical staff members who serve more than 13,000 children, adolescents and adults annually, according to the group.
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