Mental Health Care for Paramount

This is the page we held back. Paramount waited on a question the practice had to answer honestly before the page was worth writing, because the honest answer decides whether the rest of this page is any use to you. Here it is. We contract with commercial insurance and we take self-pay with a sliding scale. We do not currently bill Medi-Cal managed care. In Paramount, 29.3 percent of working-age adults are covered by Medi-Cal or a similar program, and 20.3 percent have no coverage at all. That is one resident in five with nothing, and close to half the working-age city for whom we are not a covered visit.

We are not saying that to send you away. If you are uninsured, self-pay with a sliding scale is a real option and you are welcome to ask about it before booking anything. If you are on Medi-Cal, the county can point you to care we cannot match on price, and the number is at the end of this page. Not currently is also the exact wording. Whether the practice takes Medi-Cal later depends on how the clinic grows. It is not a refusal on principle.

For the 44 percent on commercial plans, most of which we contract with, here is what a visit involves. We are a psychiatric practice. People searching for mental health services often picture counselling, and we want to be clear about the difference before you make the call. What we provide is a full psychiatric evaluation, a diagnosis where the picture supports one, medication chosen carefully and then watched, and follow-ups that adjust the plan rather than repeat it. What we do not provide is weekly talk therapy. If that is the missing piece, we will say so at the first visit and tell you where to look.

The drive is short and slightly counter-intuitive. From City Hall on Colorado Avenue the fastest route is the longest one, about 8.2 miles and 14 minutes down the 710, which Google called the fastest route despite the usual traffic when we checked at three on a weekday afternoon. The two shorter options were both slower. Long Beach Boulevard is 6.6 miles and about 16 minutes, and Paramount Boulevard to San Antonio Drive is 5.4 miles and about 17. Paramount borders north Long Beach, so the surface streets feel like they should win. They do not, at least not in the afternoon. Rush hour, morning or evening, was not sampled.

There is no rail station in Paramount. The nearest are Artesia Station on the A Line, over the city line in Compton, and Lakewood Blvd Station on the C Line, which is in Downey. The bus is a better story. Long Beach Transit’s Routes 21 and 22 carry Paramount in their name, running Downey Avenue through the city between Long Beach and Lakewood Blvd Station. For a Paramount patient without a car, that pair is the practical link to us, though a video visit is the simpler one.

One local aside, offered because it is a story about patience. The Iceland rink in Paramount opened in 1940 as one of the largest in the country. The machine that resurfaces ice was built at the back of it, and it took until the summer of 1949 before the Model A worked reliably. Nine years between noticing a problem and fixing it is about how long many people wait before seeing a psychiatrist about something that has been wearing at them. It does not have to be. The conditions we see most from this direction, depression that has flattened everything, anxiety that has stopped being useful, and the mood swings of bipolar disorder, are all treatable, and the first appointment is the hard part.

If cost has been the thing stopping you, say so when you call. That conversation is shorter and less awkward than people expect. In crisis, 988 answers by call or text at any hour, and the county mental health line is (800) 854-7771.