Healing the Mind, Alongside the Body: Inside the Mental Health Services at Advanced Dallas Hospital & Clinics

Healing From the Inside

At Advanced Dallas Hospital & Clinics, recovery is never just about bones mending or wounds closing. For many patients, true healing means tending to invisible injuries: the fears, anxieties, and emotional aftershocks that linger long after the body begins to recover. That is where our Mental Health Services team steps in, led by Licensed Professional Counselor Larry Bolding, who works closely with a dedicated group of psychiatry providers to ensure patients receive compassionate, well-rounded care.

Care That Sees the Whole Person

Every patient who comes through the subacute trauma program may arrive seeking orthopedic consultants, imaging, or physical therapy. Larry and the mental health team understand that trauma leaves more than physical scars. Car accidents, workplace injuries, and medical crises often bring hidden struggles, such as panic behind the wheel, sleepless nights, or depression that keeps patients from being present with loved ones.

Larry provides immediate evaluations, short-term counseling, and coping strategies during a patient’s inpatient stay. Together with the hospital’s psychiatry providers, patients are guided through treatment that may include therapy, counseling, and medication when appropriate. “A severed leg is a severed leg,” Larry explains. “But trauma does not always look like a cast or a scar. Sometimes the most disruptive wounds are the ones no one else can see.”

Breaking Down Stigma

For many, meeting with a counselor or mental health provider is unexpected and sometimes intimidating. Patients may hesitate when they first hear they will meet with Mental Health Services. Society has often portrayed mental health care in extremes: depression as uncontrollable crying, anxiety as constant panic attacks. Larry works to reframe this. “Emotional injury can be just as disruptive as physical injury,” he says. “Struggling to focus at work, not being able to get back in a car after a wreck, losing your daily routine, that is depression and anxiety too.”

Some patients experience a breakthrough once they open up. Larry recalls an older Hispanic man who resisted counseling until, through tears and a translator, he finally admitted he was scared. “In his culture, showing vulnerability was seen as weakness,” Larry

A Balanced Approach to Treatment

Medication can be lifesaving, and Larry is quick to credit the psychiatry providers who partner with him at Advanced Dallas. These providers bring expertise in diagnosis and prescriptions, ensuring that when medication is needed, it is carefully tailored to the patient. Larry complements their work through counseling, focusing on strategies and therapy that help patients build resilience and coping skills.

The Power of Routine and Resilience

Part of Larry’s approach is deceptively simple: restoring stability. Trauma does not just derail the body. It disrupts routines, identities, and roles. Patients lose not only their health but the familiar rituals that ground them. Helping patients rebuild those rhythms becomes part of the recovery itself

A Personal Mission

For Larry, this work is more than a profession. It is a calling shaped by personal loss. Years ago, his sister died from an overdose that began with a misdiagnosis and over- prescription of pain medication. Her struggle, and the grief that followed, still fuels his commitment. “I wanted to do for others what I wish had been done for her,” he shares. “I know how pain, both physical and emotional, can destroy a life. My goal is to make sure patients know they do not have to carry it alone.”

Looking Ahead

As Advanced Dallas continues to grow, Mental Health Services is becoming an essential partner in the hospital’s multidisciplinary model of care. Larry envisions more providers, more staff training, and continued integration with physical and occupational therapy. The goal is simple but profound: to treat every patient as a whole person.