One can never consent to creep when one feels the compulsion to soar.

The Internship at the Awakenings Institute Of Mental Wellness (AIMW) offers interns and trainees the challenging opportunity of receiving training, providing direct services, and being part of the cutting-edge Community Behavioral Health Services (CBHS) of the City of San Francisco program. The population served at AIMW is chronically mentally ill individuals with multiple diagnoses. Partnered with the City & County of San Francisco, we provide comprehensive care to residents of the adult-care Awakenings facility, where we implement cutting-edge and alternative methods of therapies to promote complete well-being and independent living when possible.

Some of the services to which trainees and interns will be introduced include: psychiatric emergency services, mobile crisis, suicide prevention, urgent care, intensive and residential treatment, and homeless shelter-based services. The internship delivers a comprehensive concept of care to all those in need of treatment for the so-called mental illnesses. The main idea of this institute is to promote mental wellness and teach a different perspective towards treatment in the mental health field.

The AIMW will also work in an outpatient basis to serve those in need of support but who do not need 24-hour care. In the outpatient modality, the Awakenings Institute for Mental Wellness will use the existential approach to treat mental illness where symptoms are just a signal that tries to convey a specific message or a movement towards wholeness. While providing direct services and with support of the Pacific Institute Academia would function as an educational and training center for social and human service professionals desiring to learn skills in working with multi-diagnosed individuals experiencing unique states of consciousness, often labeled as mental illness.

Due to the fact that our residential facility in San Francisco is undergoing architectural repair and structural retrofit, the Awakenings program clients have been temporarily re-located in other residential facilities in the city and bay area. We look forward to re-opening the facility in 2009.

Actually we are working on an outpatient basis to help those who face the stigma of mental illness and cannot move towards transformation and wholeness.