Health and Hope Clinic looks to expand with new mental health services wing

The Health and Hope Clinic has proposed to add a new building called the “Health and Wellness Wing” to its site at 1716 E. Olive Road.

Health and Hope plans to construct a new 2,095-square-foot building on the north end of its site. According to Executive Director Sally Bergosh, the clinic’s proposed building will have six mental-health-counseling rooms and a large meeting room to facilitate existing or prospective patients’ needs.

The clinic was founded in 2003 by the Pensacola Bay Baptist Association to meet the needs of the uninsured and medically underserved in Escambia County. Today, hundreds of physicians, nurses, pharmacists and volunteers help provide free health care to the medically underserved of our community.

Staff and volunteers at the clinic have provided over $15 million in healthcare services and 18,000 patient/provider visits over the past two decades, but they need more space to accommodate their growing patient load and staff needs.

“(Our) counselors are so excited because they don’t want to have to meet in my office anymore,” Bergosh said.

The Health and Hope Clinic provides a multitude of medical services for uninsured individuals including in-house prescriptions, nutritional information, preventative care and counseling.

Bergosh said she hopes that the new building will assist the clinic in breaking stigmas around mental health and raising awareness of the consequences of forgoing mental health treatment.

“My mental health counselor told me that she has yet to meet someone that has a drug addiction that doesn’t also need mental health counseling; they do run together,” Bergosh said. “It’s usually someone that’s gone into isolation, maybe they can’t afford counseling so now they self-medicate and then that’s where we get a lot of our drug problems as well.”

Many life factors can play a part in one’s overall health and behavior according to Bergosh, and the clinic partners with a variety of organizations that address issues such as domestic violence, hunger, homelessness and more.

“If they’re just a number and they walk out (of the clinic) and go into the oblivion, what do they gain from that as the patient?” she said.

State Rep. Salzman and state Sen. Doug Broxson advocated for the project to be awarded $500,000 as a part of the Fixed Outlay Grant, according to Bergosh, which Health and Hope received notice of last October. In the same month, the Health and Hope Clinic was also an IMPACT 100 Pensacola Bay Area grant recipient and was awarded about $108,000.

Alicia Baker, a long-time patient of the clinic, says workers and volunteers at the facility have become her family and make every patient feel the same way. Baker first came into the Health and Hope Clinic about six to seven years ago following the sudden passing of her mother.

The impact in IMPACT 100: 20 years of Pensacola's IMPACT 100: What has made the all-women group so impactful?

“I needed help … . Everyone here just wrapped their arms around me and helped me mentally, physically and emotionally,” Baker said. “There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do for this clinic.”

Baker says that the Health and Hope clinic doesn’t just “treat ‘em and street ‘em” but rather provides whole-patient care. After the clinic supporting her during a dark time in her life, Baker gifted Health and Hope her late mother’s cross, which is now hung up in their lobby and is one of the first things patients see when walking in.

While staff and volunteers of the clinic provide emotional support through conversation and counseling, they find many people's preconceptions about mental health support can make it difficult for patients to open up. Part of the clinic's plan for the new building is to design it in a way that is appealing, welcoming and comfortable for guests.

Carly Riccio has been Health and Hope’s Behavioral Health Manager since November, doing full-time work as the mental-health counselor for the clinic’s patients.

She says that she’s been focused on exploring patients’ background to better help them understand how concepts like how past trauma impact their present health.

She feels that breaking the stigma around mental-health counseling is often a bigger struggle than addressing the patient’s unique needs or stressors. Riccio says that additional factors, such as the cost of counseling or a lack of experience by the patient on what to do during sessions, have also been barriers in getting them to address mental health needs.

“Most of the time people think that you have to have a diagnosis to need counseling, you don’t necessarily need a diagnosable order for talking to somebody to be helpful and to get things out,” Riccio said. "Whether you’re trying to resolve issues or just get things off your chest, sometimes that’s all you really need − whether you have a diagnosable order or not.”

The clinic filed its development proposal on March 27 and the project was discussed by Escambia County’s Development Review Committee on April 3 during their pre-application meetings.

For more information on the Health and Hope Clinic’s services visit healthandhopeclinic.org.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Health and Hope Clinic propose development of Health and Wellness Wing