CBIS Spotlight: Jeannine Macias
Categories: ACBIS Insider, Professionals
Jeannine Macias is a drug and alcohol counselor with Centre for Neuro Skills in Bakersfield, Calif. Prior to working with CNS, she was a mental health worker at an adult and adolescent inpatient mental health unit. She graduated from the drug and alcohol counselor program at Cal State University and has been working in the field for 36 years.
Why have you chosen a career in brain injury? Why are you passionate about brain injury?
Mental health was where I started, and I heard about CNS through a friend who was an employee at the time. So I started out there in a part time job, and what I liked about CNS was that we really weren’t medicating the problems like I saw in the mental health field. Just remediating and remediating and medicating the behaviors. What I thought was unique was, we were not medicating but teaching people how to manage their lives again after brain injury. I started to become very interested in how to help people manage their lives. The whole person being treated cognitively, physically, and then of course emotionally. That appealed to me. They weren’t just temporary fixes.
We teach a lot about neuroplasticity, and the brain’s great capacity to heal, and that healing comes by way of stimuli. That there’s still healing that can happen with people who have, in many cases, lost all hope. It’s tremendous that we provide a place where that can be done.
How has the field of brain injury changed in your time working?
For one, recognizing substance misuse, and recognizing that it can be a comorbidity or dual diagnosis with brain injury. What I’ve seen now is, substance misuse and dependency issues are a very predominant problem associated with brain injury. We’re seeing a lot of that. And having the specialty service in treatment is paramount. We’re really giving people a second chance at regaining a life that’s worth living. I think the fact that we’ve recognized that it is a predominant problem is huge, and that we did something about it.
Why is having a CBIS important to you and how is it helpful in your daily work?
The webinars and the education that we have access to keeps me current in the field of neuro rehab and brain injury in general. It provides good resources and helpful information we can share with families. The educational component, and being current and relevant, knowing what is going on out there, the modalities being used – it’s fundamental, it helps us to springboard and use that information when treating patients. I’m able to use the BIAA as a resource for families as well.
What are some challenges you have faced with working with individuals with brain injury?
As a counselor, I think that the patients that are most resistant due to behavioral challenges, changes in personality, lack of impulse control or insight and judgment, they sometimes tend to be very resistant because of the lack of effective coping skills. But counseling helps them learn how to vent appropriately, to cope within the areas where they don’t understand what is happening to them. Counseling is able to be the glue that brings it all together – the different therapies, the understanding, the education that we’re able to provide to them, and to reach them where they are.
How can clinicians best support individuals, caregivers, and family members?
Understand that oftentimes patients, their caregivers, their loved ones, are oftentimes coming from a place of fear and confusion. They’re not understanding. Their behavior may not be what it should be, right? So understanding that confusion, and that the cognitive fog they’re in is often displayed through maladaptive behaviors. Show compassion.