A caution before the lists: reading about a condition can tell you whether to seek an assessment, but it cannot tell you what you have. Symptoms overlap. Depression can look like exhaustion, anxiety can look like a heart problem, and substance use can hide either. Identifying what is actually going on is the job of a clinical assessment, and treatment decisions follow from that assessment, not from a checklist.

One boundary to state plainly: our residential service is for adults, while assessment at our out-patient centre is available at any age, with under-18s seen with a parent or guardian. Students are supported through our school programmes, and where a young person needs clinical treatment, it involves parents or guardians — through our out-patient service where appropriate, or by referral to specialist child and adolescent services.

With that said, these are the areas we work in.

Mental health conditions

We assess and treat depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders. The team also assesses conditions across other DSM-5 categories, including personality disorders, eating and feeding disorders, sleep-wake disorders, dissociative disorders, somatic symptom disorders, neurodevelopmental and neurocognitive conditions, and disruptive and impulse-control disorders. Whether treatment happens here or through referral to another provider depends on the assessment.

Treatment may be out-patient, residential, or both, and may include psychiatric care. The appropriate setting is decided case by case, based on severity, safety, and circumstances.

When conditions occur together

Mental health conditions and substance use commonly occur together, and each can feed the other: a person may drink to quiet anxiety, and the drinking then deepens it. This is called dual diagnosis, and it is a particular focus of our assessment process, because treating one condition while missing the other leaves half the problem unaddressed. Where both are present, the treatment plan addresses both together.

If you recognise something here

Recognising a pattern in yourself or someone close to you is a reason to talk to a professional, and that is all it is — not a verdict. Call +256 770 700944 or email info@safeplacesuganda.com to arrange an assessment at our Kyambogo centre. If you are enquiring about someone else, we can talk with you about how to approach them, and our family support programme is open to you whether or not they enter treatment.