Key takeaways:
- SouthLight Healthcare, an outpatient mental health and substance use treatment provider, launched a Social Determinants of Health team in 2025 to help patients get housing, transportation, food and other resources that affect their ability to stay in treatment.
- Unmet basic needs, like housing, transportation and food insecurity can undermine mental health and substance use recovery.
- SouthLight leaders say its new social determinants team and housing assistance program are the kind of support that helps people stay in treatment.
People often walk into SouthLight Healthcare for help on one of their worst days — after an overdose, a psychiatric crisis or an emergency room visit.
But starting substance use or mental health treatment is generally only the first hurdle.
Many patients arriving at the outpatient treatment provider’s clinics don’t know how they’ll get to appointments, where they’ll sleep or where their next meal will come from. Those basic challenges can quickly derail someone’s recovery…