Elk City’s Sarah Senger has joined Elisabeth Mustachia in her Psychiatric Wellness practice in an Elk City office. Mustachia is a board certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, who holds a master’s degree in nursing and has been a nurse since 2003. Their practice provides an integrative approach to help individuals with depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other mood disorders. Additionally, they help with hormone levels, inflammatory markers, and nutritional deficiencies.
Senger’s office is located at 609 S. Main St., and she can be reached at 405-437-2240 or by email at info@psyhciatricwellness. org. She will be seeing clients either in person or virtually. She specializes in treating teens and adults who have experienced emotional trauma, as well as those with mood and anxiety disorders.
“With a deep understanding of the unique challenges and needs of her patients, Sarah brings a compassionate holistic and patient-centered approach to her practice. With a strong commitment to life-long learning, Sarah strives to make a positive impact in the lives of her clients.,” Mustachia says in Senger’s website biography.
Senger graduated from Maryville University with a Master’s of Science degree in nursing. She is trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). She is also a Certified Integrative Mental Health Professional, where she is able to use a variety of tools to help clients heal. This includes life-style changes, nutritional interventions and medications when needed.
For the past 11 years Senger worked as the school nurse for Elk City Public Schools. She provided essential care, helped with community resources and support for the students and their families. She will soon get her certification as a board certified Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner.
As Senger was working on her degree to become a nurse practitioner, she needed to work as a preceptor under another psychiatric mental health practitioner. She found Mustachia’s practice on a Google search for the knowledge and guidance.
“It’s difficult to find preceptors, which is what we call it in the nursing world. They had a link on their website for the application to apply to be a student. I completed the application, which was honestly pretty neat to know that they really take the time to look at who they’re taking on,” Senger began.
“I was a nervous wreck because I had to do an interview, read a book, and write an essay. Then I had a Google interview with all of them (there are six other practitioners in the practice). That was how the selection process went. They let me know that I could be a student with them. I was thrilled.”
Mustachia said that Senger’s application was very good because she put a lot of thought into the application. Although Senger’s options seemed to be running out, Mustachia and her practice was a perfect fit.
“It’s been nothing but positive since I started. I started going to the clinic in Del City in May of last year. I was on site three days a week, May, through August, or September.,” Senger continued.
“One thing that’s really cool about Elizabeth (Mustachia) and her clinic is that she really takes an interest in her students to train. I mean, she put together her own training materials, and we would come up once a week and learn about different topics, different therapies, and do some more hands on training. This was a lot more than we got in school.”
Mustachia said that the students work together and shadow the other clinicians with clients. If they do really well, she will ask them to join her with the clinic.
“The extra stuff that we do, we’re an integrative psychiatry clinic, which is a little bit different than a lot of psychiatry clinics. A lot of psychiatry clinics focus mostly on medications. We really like to look at the root cause. When we’re talking about root cause, it’s not usually a chemical imbalance in your brain that causes you to have anxiety or depression or the symptoms. A lot of the time, it has to do with something that’s happened See Wellness page 8.
in your past, or maybe it has to do with a nutritional deficiency or a hormonal imbalance, things like that. I think that’s what makes us different,” Mustachia explained.
Although she said that they do use medications, they address other lifestyle, social factors, or physical factors, too. In the clinic they look at the entire picture of what is going on in a person’s life, and not just looking at the medications. They help all aspects of a client’s life to assist in working together to have positive outcomes.
Prior to making an appointment with one of the psychiatric nurse practitioners, a client must fill out a lengthy assessment that they look at and write a detailed summary and plan before the client comes into the clinic.
“We usually spend at least an hour reviewing their information before they come in. At their first visit, we’ve already got at least some lifestyle recommendations ready for them. We already have an idea of what labs we’re going to order. You don’t get all the information from the paperwork, so we must do more at an interview. Sometimes we change what we do initially,” she added.
At the Elk City office, Senger will be following the clinic’s procedures, but she will be able to offer mental health services in an underserved area.
“People have the option to choose whether they would like to be seen in person or do their appointment virtually. It actually works out really well. You’re still able to make those connections and help people. I think it is a great option for people who live out of town or if roads are bad,” Senger said.
She is thankful that Mustachia gave her the opportunity to join their practice by adding the satellite office to help serve the people in her hometown. Senger joins Mustachia and the other psychiatric nurse practitioners, Jennifer Amato, Jeannie TallBear, Allison Jackson, Jennifer Davis, LPC Ronda Armendariz, and Ashlee Pendleton.
They accept major commercial insurances including Blue Cross, United, UMR, Cigna, Aetna, Health Choice, WebTPA, Humana and others as well as Medicare, Medicaid, SoonerCare and TRICARE. For more information go their website at psychatricwellnes. org.
