Portland Anxiety Clinic is now offering community-based services to individuals and families. This service is designed to help assist individuals and families in community and home settings who have difficulty managing symptoms outside of our clinics. The goal of all programming offered at Portland Anxiety Clinic is twofold: to reduce symptoms associated with the presenting problem(s) and to increase the patient’s ability to function across different settings (e.g., school, work, family/home life, engage in self-directed selfcare, etc.). Sometimes therapy/intensive therapy (multiple hours a day at multiple days per week) may not be enough to see lasting change. Portland Anxiety Clinic is excited to offer Community-Based Skills Training as an add-on service to help to achieve those goals.

An integral part of the evidence-based therapies performed at Portland Anxiety Clinic is to extend the patient and family’s learning beyond the clinical setting. This is often achieved through assigned therapy homework; however, some patients struggle to complete the assignments given to them on their own, or even with the help of family and friends. Research has repeatedly shown the underlying thought process that keeps an anxiety syndrome alive is the individual’s perception of what they think is dangerous (when, in fact, many of those perceived fears are placed on people, objects, situations, memories, and predictions that are not truly dangerous in the here and now). Safety learning, on the other hand, must be learned through experience. Most patients have some level of difficulty approaching real life situations; therefore, Community-Based Services are offered to help our patients achieve their goals.

Conditions that are eligible for Community-Based Services:

• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
• Social Anxiety Disorder
• Panic Disorder
• Agoraphobia
• Persistent Depression
• Major Depression
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• Body Dysmorphic Disorder
• Specific Phobia
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• Olfactory Referencing Syndrome (thinking you emit an odor)
• Hypochondriasis/Health Anxiety
• Trichotillomania (hair pulling)
• Excoriation (skin picking)
• Tics/Tourette’s Syndrome
• Hoarding

Services that are offered by our Community-Based Skills Trainers:

• Support with completing therapy, IOP, and PHP homework assignments
• Support with reducing or eliminating compulsions and safety behaviors
• Support with gradually exposing to fear-related situations
• Support with returning to avoided environments (e.g., school, work, stores, restaurants, etc.)
• Support with getting started on pleasure or achievement activities that they have trouble initiating
• Support with resisting engagement in an activity or process that is either causing distress or taking away from other important life activities
• Support with engaging in a skillful response in the face of a stressful situation
• Support with reducing hair pulling and skin picking
• Support with reducing tics
• Support with managing purchases when excessive purchasing is the identified behavior
• Support with discarding items that are no longer needed
• Support with organizing items when hoarding is the present problem

Services Community-Based Skills Trainers cannot provide:

• Transporting patients, families, or other individuals
• Academic tutoring/school homework completion that is not related to exposure therapy or behavioral activation
• Doing individual or family psychotherapy outside the clinical setting
• Caring for a patient’s and/or family’s daily living needs (hygiene, toileting, showering, bathing, etc.)
• Taking a patient to an emergency department to manage a crisis and remaining there until the patient is released
• Administering medications, suggesting a change in medication, or how someone should take their medication
• Performing an individual’s work-related duties (e.g., attending their job and performing their actual job responsibilities)
• Intervening in a family disagreement or fight
• Stopping someone from a physical fight or intervening when a physical fight is present
• Stopping an individual from obtaining/using drugs or alcohol
• Helping an individual or family intervene with law enforcement should the patient, family member of a patient, or other break the law
• Help manage a physical injury or help transport a physically injured individual to the hospital
• Intervene with an individual who is engaged in a dangerous behavior (e.g., self-harming, fast driving, suicide attempts, etc.)
• Cleaning an individual or family’s home
• Accompanying any individual or group to purchase alcohol or marijuana

Community-Based Services are not eligible to be covered by insurance plans. There is an out-of-pocket cost associated with this service in addition to the costs associated with Portland Anxiety Clinic’s outpatient psychotherapy, psychiatry services, intensive outpatient program, and partial hospitalization program.