Every day has become a balancing act in which your professional self puts on a confident and competent front that hides the turmoil inside or at home. If you are dealing with a mental health issue or a substance use disorder, there is only so long you can hide the truth.
The fact that you are here, reading this blog, is a crucial first step in getting the help you need to restore balance, mental health, and wellness to your life, including both your professional and personal lives.
In his private practice, board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Matthew Goldenberg specializes in helping professionals and safety-sensitive workers (i.e., physicians, pharmacists, dentists, nurses, professional athletes, pilots, and others) get the mental health and substance use disorder treatment they need to get back to their productive, and much happier, lives.
Here’s a look at how Dr. Goldenberg can help.
If you are struggling with alcohol or drug addiction and continue to hold down your job, you are not alone. You may have heard “functional alcoholic” or “high-functioning addict.”
About two-thirds of adults with a substance use disorder in the United States are also employed. For professionals, their employment is often the last thing to go. Continued alcohol/substance abuse makes job performance more and more tenuous the more extended the substance use disorder goes unaddressed.
The state of the collective mental health in our country is not great — depression affects about 21 million adults, and anxiety disorders affect another 40 million people. This means that between one-quarter and one-third of adults are impacted by one of these issues, and most are in the workforce.
Dr. Goldenberg has the training and experience to help professionals maintain and restore their productive home and work lives. For example, he is HIMS trained and performs HIMS and general psychiatric evaluations for pilots for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). HIMS stands for Human Intervention Motivational Study, a program created “to provide a system whereby afflicted individuals are treated and successfully returned to the cockpit.”
Dr. Goldenberg also evaluates and treats other safety-sensitive workers like healthcare professionals. Dr. Goldenberg can help when an evaluation is needed to determine the next best steps toward getting help. He can also assist with referrals to appropriate care levels and outpatient treatment when appropriate. When working with healthcare professionals, the goal is to help them safely continue operating or returning to work.
Suppose you are a pilot, a physician, a professional athlete, a business executive, or you are in an entirely unrelated profession. In that case, Dr. Goldenberg can work with you and your employer when appropriate to safeguard and extend your career and restore your mental health and wellness.
Whether you recognize you are drinking too much, received a DUI and do not know where to turn, or cannot control your drug use, Dr. Goldenberg can provide evaluation and treatment if needed.
Or maybe you, or a loved one, are finding it increasingly hard to work because of crippling anxiety, or you feel lost on the job because of depression; Dr. Goldenberg can help. He understands that your work is paramount to your ability to provide for yourself and your family, and he works quickly to get you back on track.
Through a comprehensive psychiatric and substance use disorder evaluation, Dr. Goldenberg can determine what is behind your mental health issues and which approach will work best for you. This may include medications, which can be significant short-term solutions for re-establishing more stable mental health.
He also works with you by providing or referring you to specialists who can provide specific and individualized psychotherapies that can provide the interventions and tools you need to combat mood dysregulation and anxiety issues and help you enter long-term recovery.
It is hard to say here exactly what your treatment plan may look like because Dr. Goldenberg takes an individualized biological, psychological, and social/spiritual approach to each case. So you can rest assured Dr. Goldenberg is the mental health expert and substance use specialist that every high-functioning professional should have on their team.
To learn more about navigating a mental health or substance use disorder as a professional, we invite you to schedule a free, 10-minute phone call with Dr. Goldenberg, who treats patients in California and Alaska. Simply click here to set that up.
