When it comes to treating people with addiction disorders and mental illnesses, it’s good to have options, and now Santa Maria has one more.
iRecover, which opened at 607 E. Plaza Drive in Santa Maria, offers outpatient mental health and addiction services.
Jim Gray started the company in Alberta, Canada. Deon Smit is iRecover’s chief operating officer of outpatient clinics. According to Smit, inspiration to start the company came after Gray’s son was nearly killed by an impaired driver. Gray is iRecover’s CEO. The franchise in Santa Maria opened in June.
Originally from South Africa, Smit has a college degree in forensic psychology. He worked in England for six years before collaborating with Gray in 2011. Unlike Gray, Smit’s interest in the field of psychology is purely academic.
iRecover in Santa Maria specializes in addiction recovery—including drugs and process addictions, such as gambling—and mental health treatment for disorders such as depression, anxiety, and anger management. The clinic also offers family support services.
Most of the company’s facilities are inpatient residential facilities, meaning that the patients stay overnight. The company has locations in Canada, as well as a residential facility that was opened in Palm Springs
in 2013.
Smit opened the Santa Maria outpatient facility in June after learning from area doctors that there’s a shortage of mental health services along the Central Coast. Smit said establishing a clinic here was just a natural progression for the company.
The Santa Maria clinic is the first outpatient facility for iRecover. He decided to go with the outpatient model when he noticed that there was a gap in coverage between treatment at a doctor’s office and the need to check into a residential facility.
“When you’re too sick for the doctor’s office and not sick enough for a facility, where do you go?” Smit told the Sun. “That was the idea behind this facility.”
The clinics are staffed with licensed psychologists and addiction specialists. There’s about a 50-50 split on experiential and academic approaches to treatment. This makes iRecover unique, Smit said, because it helps some of his staff to better connect with patients.
“There are no medical doctors, and drugs aren’t prescribed here,” Smit said.
However, if the patient has an actual medical need, iRecover will refer them to a medical professional.
As the name implies, iRecover has a technological connection, Smit said. All patients at the clinics receive tablet computers loaded with psychological treatment programs that they can complete at their own pace.
Most forms of insurance, including CenCal, cover the clinic, Smit said.
He’s hoping to attract more highly qualified therapists to work at the Santa Maria outpatient facility.
“We’d like for them to operate under our franchise,” Smit said. “We’ve had some really good success rates.”
For more information visit irecover.ca/irecover-behavioral-health-clinic-santa-maria/ or call 877-387-4155.
Highlights
• It’s the end of the year, and tax season looms. Myfreetaxes.org is a free tax filing site for families and individuals who earned less than $62,000 in 2016. They can file online or in person at a certified volunteer income tax assistance site in Santa Barbara County if they earned less than $54,000 this year. An affiliated website, benefitkitchen.com, provides financial literacy information as well. Volunteers are also needed as income tax assistants.
Certification classes start on Jan. 4, 2017, in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. For more information on becoming a volunteer, call Dorothy Mogavero, director of impact initiatives at the Northern Santa Barbara County United Way at 922-0329. Call 899-2313 for more information on certified tax assistance sites on the Central Coast.
Staff Writer David Minsky wrote this week’s Biz Spotlight. Information should be sent to the Sun via fax, email, or mail.
This article appears in Dec 8-15, 2016.
