Community Counseling Services

About Community Counseling Services

Community Counseling Services runs recovery residences in Columbus, Mississippi, and outpatient care across Lowndes County and six neighboring counties. It is the community mental health center for Region VII, a public nonprofit organization, and it has been the region's designated behavioral health provider since Mississippi organized its 14 mental health regions in 1972.

A Publicly Governed Recovery Housing Provider

Most recovery housing providers in Mississippi are private companies or churches. This one is a commission. Its governing board is made up of commissioners appointed by the board of supervisors in each county it serves, each for a four-year term, and the organization is a 501(c)(3) that takes no direct appropriation from the state budget. It is licensed and partially funded by the Department of Mental Health and supported by competitive federal and state grants. That structure puts an ordinary line of public accountability behind the residential programs, and it is the reason the organization can hold a published policy of serving all patients regardless of ability to pay.

The Recovery Homes at 1011 Main Street in Columbus

Residential chemical dependency treatment is delivered at a single Columbus campus holding two programs:

• The Pines, at 1011 Main Street in Columbus, for men.
• Cady Hill, at 1011 Main Street in Columbus, for women.

One campus, two programs, one administration. The arrangement means a household in crisis is dealing with a single intake process and a single set of clinical staff, and it means the organization can keep men's and women's residential treatment running side by side in a region where neither would fill a building on its own.

Residential Treatment Inside a Wider Recovery Housing System

Residential care is one line in a much longer service list. The organization also provides outpatient substance use treatment, prevention services, peer support, DUI assessment, recovery support services, adult and children's mental health care, psychiatric and physician services, targeted case management, psychosocial rehabilitation and an intellectual and developmental disabilities waiver program. For a resident, the practical value of that breadth appears at discharge. Aftercare, a prescriber, a case manager and a peer support specialist are all available from the same organization that ran the residential stay, in the county where the person actually lives.

Crisis Response Before Recovery Housing

The organization operates a mobile crisis response team and a crisis line staffed around the clock, and it publishes guides to Mississippi's civil and alcohol and drug commitment processes. Its stated position is that families should contact the center about services, mobile crisis and crisis stabilization beds before filing a commitment affidavit at the chancery clerk's office. That is a useful thing to know about a recovery housing provider. The organization is reachable at the point where a family is deciding whether to force treatment, and it will discuss the alternatives to doing so.

Where This Mississippi Recovery Housing Provider Works

The territory is the Golden Triangle of east Mississippi and the hill counties immediately west of it: Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay, Noxubee, Choctaw, Webster and Winston. Counseling offices sit in Columbus, Starkville, West Point, Macon, Ackerman, Eupora and Louisville, with administration in West Point. The region combines two university towns, a substantial manufacturing corridor along the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway and a great deal of rural county in between, so the organization is often the only residential treatment within an hour's drive for the people it serves.

Certification Behind These Mississippi Sober Homes

Both residential programs are certified by the Mississippi Department of Mental Health and appear in the state's alcohol and drug treatment services directory. Mississippi has no certifying body for peer recovery residences and no NARR affiliate, so no Mississippi address carries a recovery residence certification level. Departmental certification of the treatment program, plus licensure of the organization, is the deepest public record available on a residential provider in this state, and this operator holds both.

Questions for This Recovery Housing Provider

At the organization level, the questions differ from the ones about a particular program. What the intake fee works out to once income and insurance are counted, and whether payment is due at the time of service. How long the wait for a residential bed runs, and what outpatient care fills the gap. Which county office will handle care after discharge. How a complaint is escalated past a program to the commission itself. A publicly governed provider has a board meeting open to the public every fourth Tuesday, which is a route most private operators do not offer.