Last year, nearly 2,000 residents throughout Androscoggin County were helped by Sweetser’s mental health services. So many more Mainers need our collective help and instead are left lingering on waitlists. In the year since the Lewiston mass shooting, the long road to hope and healing isn’t over. Countless Mainers are uninsured or underinsured or lack basic access to community-based support and care.

We have served the Lewiston area for decades. In order to continue to meet the long-term mental health needs of the community and expand treatment to more people, we have to literally meet people where they’re at; we have to bring services directly to them.

Sweetser’s new Hope & Healing Center in Lewiston enables us to serve more Mainers in need of mental health and substance use treatment. In fact, we hope to serve at least 700 more Mainers at this location alone.

Think of this center as a mental health version of a walk-in care clinic, a one-stop shop for all things mental health and recovery. It’s your gateway into accessing the entire behavioral health system, especially if you don’t know where to start or what program you need. We have a dedicated access team to help identify the appropriate level of treatment for you.

Having a central, physical space located in service center communities will reduce barriers to accessing treatment, expand the type of services offered, and increase the number of people served. Getting care shouldn’t require a doctorate in understanding program acronyms or require families to jump through hoops to find which program is available at a dozen different locations. Walk-in hours deliver a vital lifeline for people who both need immediate help and who need easy access to professional assistance.

This center is the only Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic, or CCBHC, in Androscoggin County. We’ve seen this program be successful after opening a similar center in Sanford earlier this year and continuing to expand care out of our existing Brunswick center. Sweetser is leading this best practice model of care expansion across our state.

Our evidence-based services include everything from 24/7 mobile crisis response and crisis stabilization, outpatient therapy, peer support, medication management, care coordination, targeted case management, and medication-assisted treatment.

We worked with the state and federal government to make this a reality. Thanks to grant funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, on the federal level, and to leadership at Maine Department of Health and Human Services, we were able to coordinate this expansion of services. This walk-in care model is really the future of behavioral health. The hope is to see the state adopt this type of program in every county.

Every Mainer deserves access to treatment and recovery and this center will help us deliver on that, taking more people off waitlists for services. No one will be turned away. Everyone has access to care coordination to get connected to the appropriate level of treatment based on their specific needs.

Sweetser’s Hope & Healing Center is located at 20 Mollison Way in Lewiston, next to Just-in-Time Recreation. We chose this location to highlight Lewiston’s story of resilience in the face of tragedy. Together we are writing a new chapter of hope and healing, and we will all be forever Lewiston Strong.