Adjustment Issues
Advanced Therapeutic Solutions for Anxiety provides therapy for the treatment of Adjustment Disorder.
After experiencing a significant stressor, there can be intense emotional or behavioral symptoms that develop, usually within three months of the stressor. It can be one stressor (e.g., a relationship break-up) or several stressors (e.g. getting fired; family conflict), that can be recurrent (e.g., seeing your ex during the holidays) or continuous (finding out you have a chronic illness). Sometimes the stressor is a new transition (e.g., getting married, having a baby, moving away for college) that creates significant distress and impairs with daily functioning. The stressor can affect one person or an entire community (e.g., natural disaster). Emotional and behavioral symptoms can include depressed mood, anxiety, behavioral misconduct, or all three.
Adjustment disorders are common, ranging from 5-20% in an outpatient setting, and up to 50% in a psychiatric hospital setting. It is also short-term, ranging from three months to six months after the stressor or its consequences have ended. Treatment for adjustment disorders includes differentiating between normative adjustment and significant impairment that impacts a person’s social, educational, or occupational functioning. Differentiating between adjustment disorder and other conditions (e.g., depression, anxiety, bereavement) is also important during the course of treatment. If symptoms persist beyond six months, other disorders are considered.
It is possible that adjustment disorder will remit on its own, but it is also possible that symptoms can worsen and lead to another disorder, such as major depressive disorder, an anxiety disorder, or alcohol/drug abuse or addiction.
Treatment is often short term, solution-focused, and aims to address the symptoms that are present. To address depressed mood, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) are used to help identify thought errors and focus on thoughts and actions that can help get back to daily functioning. For anxiety symptoms, learning to turn off the anxiety loop and increasing use of relaxation strategies is incorporated. For behavioral conduct issues (which is a common reaction to life stressors in children and teens) emotion regulation, anger management, processing the stressor, and improving communication are targeted in treatment.
It is possible that adjustment disorder will remit on its own, but it is also possible that symptoms can worsen and lead to another disorder.
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Questions? View FAQs View Insurance InformationClinical Procedures for Adjustment Issues Evaluation and Outpatient Treatment
Free Phone Intake Consultation
Up to 30-min phone consultation so we can hear about your presenting issue, the symptoms you are experiencing, when they started, the severity of symptoms, and if we are the appropriate place for your treatment. The diagnostic intake process is discussed, and your insurance/billing questions are answered. If the treatment you need is within our scope of services, we begin the scheduling process. If it is deemed that we are not the appropriate place, we will provide you with referrals and resources to help you. We want to make sure to connect you with services, and that includes helping you find treatment elsewhere if that's what you need.
Free
CPT CODE: 0
Diagnostic Evaluation
A 90-min diagnostic intake interview with the child’s parents to assess symptoms, collect history, review systems (school, home, community), differential diagnosis, review of prior records, review parents’ families psychiatric histories, and follow up/clarify any questions that arose from reviewing the questionnaires parents/child/teen filled out before the intake session.
Starting at 295
CPT CODE: 90791